


The truth that bleeds, three levels deep

by nccis



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood, Illnesses, M/M, Romance, Swearing, Terminal Illnesses, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 16:36:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nccis/pseuds/nccis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six days after the inception job, Arthur’s door was kicked in by MI6 and Eames, the former pointing guns at him and the latter looking like he had not slept a wink since LAX. </p><p>“They contacted me and needed the best team. Who was I going to take aboard if not you?”</p><p>Arthur wanted to say several things, including <em>but this was supposed to be my holiday, we just got out of that nightmare and you’re trying to send us into another one, you had the fucking nerve to drag Cobb out of the reach of his children, why the hell do you work for MI6, how the hell did you find me, can’t you just go away</em> and<em> why are you staring me like that?</em></p><p>“Fine.” He stood up, braving the fact that he was only dressed in his blue pyjama bottoms. “What do you need done?”</p><p>“If you could wear something less unsettling,” Eames said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reality

**Author's Note:**

> My most ambitious Inception fic yet (and possibly ever), second edit/beta, brotherly encouragement and an endless series of jokes referring to Arthur’s coming by my main man [sonnss](http://sonnss.tumblr.com).
> 
> Five chapters that I'm posting as follows:  
>  **I Reality** \- Tuesday 20 November  
>  **II Dream level one (Village/Yusuf)** \- Tuesday 4 December  
>  **III Dream level two (Nightclub/Minerva)** \- Tuesday 11 December  
>  **IV Dream level three (Hospital/Arthur)** \- Tuesday 18 December  
>  **V Reality** \- Tuesday 25 December
> 
>  **WARNINGS for swearing and potentially offensive use of language.** Contains violence, blood, torture and illness, all happening in the heat of a job, seriously skip this one if you feel queasy easily, it gets pretty hardcore. Also references to OC/Eames in the past but Eames didn't like it, so don't you be discouraged either! 
> 
> Although this is definitely not an AU, I am freestyling with the Inception canon, modern science and some other things pretty liberally here, fact checked as far as possible but my priority was to write something interesting.
> 
> Also, MERRY CHRISTMAS to Inception fandom <3 I dedicate this fic to YOU.
> 
>  **Edit 15/12/2012:** Following A3O's advice, I am restricting this work to registered users for the time being. Thank you so much for the fantastic support!!! :)  
>  **Edit 25/12/2012:** Reopening for anon because I feel for those that started reading and never got to continue. More notes in the beginning of Chapter 5.

 

  
**I**  
**Reality**

 

Arthur smiled when he opened his front door; a weary, exhausted smile. His home smelled like home. His plants were well-watered and happy thanks to his dear neighbour who had agreed to look after them. His bed was made, sheets brand new – he knew this because the last thing he had done after leaving was made his bed with new all-white sheets. It was a principle. After a job, Arthur considered it compulsory to be able to return to a nice-smelling, clean bed.

This time, it was even more important. Arthur set his suitcase on the table, pushed his luggage against the wall and went into the bathroom. He stripped down quickly and put on the shower.

 _Inception._ How the hell had he been talked into that? Damn Cobb and his recklessness. Arthur was not sure which was more shocking: that they had been dumb enough to try it, or that they had actually succeeded.

It did not matter, though. _All is well that ends well._ Arthur closed his eyes and let the shower pour over him, massage his shoulders, rinse out the stress.

His mind returned to their farewell at the airport. Saito had disappeared immediately. Cobb had just given Arthur a glance, smiled, and then he had been off – quite probably for good. Ariadne had gotten all babbly and confused – they were supposed to pretend to be strangers but she had opened a conversation with both Arthur and Yusuf while they were waiting for luggage; apparently she had never had time to consider what she would do in the States. Arthur had pretended to never have met her and curtly advised her to have a holiday in L.A. Yusuf, the sneaky bastard, had grabbed his chance and offered to take Ariadne around, considering he had no plans either. Ariadne had been stupid enough to fall for the trap, and Arthur had not warned her. Suited her right for breaking the security rules that she would soon learn that Yusuf’s idea of sightseeing was probably looking out of the hotel room window with a bottle of Champagne and cheesy music.

After all of that, Arthur had found himself standing in the airport lobby alone with Eames.

“Quite a journey, don’t you think?” Eames had said cheerfully and shot another one of his moodkiller smirks at Arthur, who wondered if he should have tortured the team until they all had sworn in their mother’s name not to go talking to each other after the job. Even if it had been a supermassive breakthrough.

“Until next time, Mr Eames,” Arthur had ground out, grabbed his bag and gone without looking back. His cheeks had burned, and he had hoped so much that it hadn’t been showing. He had hid in the airport toilets for an ungraceful couple of hours – until he had been absolutely sure Eames had been gone. Then, he had booked his flight to New York City.

Admittedly, the cause of Arthur’s ridiculous camouflaging antics was not security. Just like the cause of Eames’ face-pulling, Arthur feared, had nothing to do with his usual tendency to dig blood out of his nose with Arthur’s finger.  

Instead, both had everything to do with a strange exchange of smiles that had just kind of happened, right in the middle of the job, just before Arthur had been left alone in his dream and the rest of the team had gone one level deeper. Under normal circumstances, Arthur and Eames never smiled at each other. Well, to be exact, _Arthur_ never smiled at Eames and Eames had a habit of smirking at Arthur like an overgrown school bully.

Cobb had once said that if Eames and Arthur didn’t have a “tendency for starting to behave like kindergarten bullies when put in the same room”, he would have hired the two of them for every job. Arthur would probably have felt embarrassed over this assessment – if he had not been too relieved to have some kind of guarantee that jobs without Eames still existed. It was bad enough to see him a few times a year.

Back in the dream, in the hotel, however, things had had different weight. Arthur had been more than a little worried by the fact that he was going to be surrounded by Fischer’s trigger-happy security projections, he had to protect all of them alone, and if he died he would end up in limbo and probably seal the same fate for the rest of the team.

Eames had been following the same line of thought.

“Security is gonna run down on you hard.”

 _We are probably all going to die,_ Arthur had thought, and let a smile slip on his face.  “And I will lead them on a merry chase.”

Eames had smiled back, unreadable as always, eyes dancing with what could have been anything between mockery and rectal itch. “Just be back before the kick.”

At that moment, their past spectacles had not seemed to matter that much.

“Go to sleep, Mr Eames.”

Afterwards, Arthur had expected for Eames to find some inventive way to start mocking Arthur’s unexpected friendliness, wind him up, but the man had stayed uncharacteristically silent for the rest of the journey. He had barely even spoken to Cobb.

By the time they had landed in L.A., Arthur had worked himself up thinking that Eames was just playing a new kind of game – staying mute and hoping for Arthur to come probing. _He can wait,_ Arthur had thought. After landing, however, Eames had approached Arthur with his looking-for-trouble face, and Arthur had made his insta-exit. Tricks and traps, that was what it always was with Eames.

Arthur turned off the shower and stepped out to dry himself. The biggest favour he could do to himself was to forget about the whole thing. Have a little holiday. Take care of his plants. Clean up the house properly; it had been gathering dust for a long time. Renew his gym membership. Go to movies and see everything he had missed during the job. Maybe go out, find a date. Normal life, until he felt ready to take on another job. And this time it should be something without dysfunctional sedatives, Japanese entrepreneurs and limbo. Something nice and simple and, above all, not so disturbingly deadly.

 

xx

Arthur never had the chance to go for a date. He barely managed to watch a couple of movies, and only made it as far as to call the gym to ask what he needed to do to get the renewal. He only had vague holiday plans, and he only got around cleaning up the bathroom. His plants were as normal.

Maybe they would have sported flowers in the end, Arthur never found out. Because before he got there, the door to his Manhattan flat was kicked in.

Arthur jumped up at the sound and grabbed his Glock from the nightstand, but Cobb’s hand was on his wrist before he could point it at anyone. Arthur managed to focus his sleepy gaze and saw that besides Cobb, a bunch of what looked like special agents – _and Eames –_ had infiltrated his bedroom. All were pointing their guns at Arthur, save Cobb, of course, and Eames, who was just standing there with his hands in his pockets.

“What the hell is this?”

“You need to come with us.” Cobb looked like shit. Eames was wearing the same jacket as at the airport. How long had it been? Six days. Had they been on this – whatever it was – since then?

“What’s going on?”

“We’ll tell you on the way.”

“What if I don’t want to come?”

“You don’t have a choice. Put the gun down.”

It looked terribly much like Cobb and Eames had been bought.

“Can you at least explain what it is?” Arthur glared at Cobb and dropped the gun back on the nightstand. Cobb let go of his wrist.

“A job.”

“It doesn’t look like one.”

“It’s different,” Cobb said. Arthur caught his downwards glance and remembered he was sleeping topless. _Fantastic._

“We need your help,” one of the agents spoke up. His accent was British.

“May I possibly find out who is _we_?”

“MI6,” Eames spoke up. “Look, I am sorry, darling. This is my fault. They contacted me and needed the best team. Who was I going to take aboard if not you?”

Arthur wanted to say several things, including _but this was supposed to be my holiday, we just got out of that nightmare and you’re trying to send us into another one, you had the fucking nerve to drag Cobb out of the reach of his children, why the hell do you work for MI6, how the hell did you find me, can’t you just go away_ and _why are you staring me like that?_

“Fine.” He stood up, braving the fact that he was only dressed in his blue pyjama bottoms. “What do you need done?”

“If you could wear something less unsettling,” Eames said.

“Britain is threatened by a bioweapon.” One of the agents stepped forward and extended his hand to Arthur. “I apologise for us breaking into your apartment like this, but we were not sure how you would react. We have been warned that you lot keep a lot of illegal weapons here. My name is Ryan Woodhouse.”

Arthur shook the hand but kept his eyes on Cobb. “Is there a payout for this job, or are you just holding me at gun-point?”

Woodhouse gestured at his men, who all lowered their guns at once. “As I said, it was only a precaution. You will be paid as much as you require.”

“I require significant amounts.” Now that Arthur was more awake, he was also getting more irritated. Not even a week of peace, and he was once again in the middle of some mess.

“We will find a deal that satisfies both parties,” Woodhouse said. “I want to be honest with you, Arthur. What we are dealing with at the moment is completely beyond the capacity and experience of MI6. Does the name Radu Gajic ring a bell to you?”

“Of course it does.” Radu Gajic was one of the three people known to have been involved in the development of the first PASIV. He was most famous for being the first person to have ever entered another’s dream and most infamous for disappearing from the dreamshare community three years back. People had generally assumed he had been killed as a consequence of some job gone badly. Arthur voiced this:

“I thought he was dead.”

“This is what everybody thought until now. It appears his death had been staged. He was hired by a Chinese high-level security company for his expertise in chemistry, based on his merits at developing the PASIV. I don’t know how much they paid him to leave his dreamshare colleagues and turn him against his own country – he was a British citizen, although of Yugoslavian origin. We have recent intel that he is certainly alive and well, and has managed to develop a bioweapon way worse than any of the ones encountered to date. This one is a genius combination of some Somnacin’s characteristics and cellular structure of an already mutated human influenza virus. And, believe it or not, but he has also become the co-CEO of the company. If you met him in the street, you’d never guess he is anything more than a cocaine addiction beyond your ordinary businessman.”

“What does this virus do?” Arthur asked.

“After a symptomless incubation period of 48 hours, it starts out with flu-like symptoms,” Eames continued. “Muscular pain, swelling of throat, headache. When the fever rises, the hallucinations begin. The majority of the physical pain comes from breathing difficulties, and often the headache is so strong that it causes vomiting and even momentary blindness. However, even worse is what happens to the mind. The fatality rate of known victims stands at 100 per cent as of now, so nobody has come back to explain how it feels, but apparently whatever artificial RNA Gajic had managed to create out of Somnacin is to blame for the limbo-like hallucinations that overtake the victim in the final stage of the virus. They do not fall asleep but at the same time, they stop being awake. What follows is a never-ending nightmare, until the body gives in. For the luckiest victims, it happens after a few hours. If you are less lucky, you live side-by-side with your worst demons for up to a week.”

Now that Arthur looked at him longer, he realised Eames looked as shit as Cobb. Equally deprived of sleep, if better groomed.

“And they are bombarding exactly who with this virus?”

“Just the secret service for now,” Woodhouse replied. “And the situation is quite serious. We have several agents already contaminated – apparently as some kind of a warning of what they will unleash into the public. It is probably just their attempt at trying to see our attempt at disarming them. They start small. No doubt if they succeed here, the next one in line will be the US, and that time around it won’t be a guerrilla initiative by a private company. It will be the Chinese government themselves.”

“You think they are behind this?”

“Absolutely.”

“What do they want?”

“Simply for Britain to pull out of Chinese market and stay put when it comes to the actions of China or any of its allies.”

“But – this is blackmailing. This means war.”

“Yes indeed, Arthur.” This Woodhouse seemed young for an agent of his rank, but lacked no confidence. “It will be a war if it gets to that, and a global one at that.“

“I can’t believe Gajic would do something like this.”

“He does anything he is capable of, if he is paid enough,” Cobb said.

“Yes – but PASIV was his life.”

“Precisely. He would not pass a chance to make it an international weapon _and_ make obscene amounts of money while at it.”

“So—“ suddenly, Arthur realised the whole horrifying truth – why MI6 had gone to such an extent to get the best people on the job — “what you are trying to get to, here, is that _Gajic is the mark_. Am I right?”

“Yes. He has not shared his information with anyone, not even written it down.”

Gajic, who _had developed the goddamn thing._

The man had been a genius. And an awful person. Arthur had only seen him twice, and never spoken to him directly. He had a voice like Hitler’s and a face too feminine for a man. His eyes were different size, and he smelled like expensive but industrial cologne. Balding with batches of dark hair on the sides of his head, brown eyes, big nose, pale skin. Walked with his legs spread wide, like his testicles were hurting all the time.

Arthur sighed and spread his hands. “Can I dress up first, or do I have to come like this?”

“Thank you, Arthur,” Eames said in a strange voice, and they all left the room at once.

 

xx

It turned out that all except for Ariadne had been reassembled for this team. Eames’ choice of architect was a woman that Arthur had never worked with but whom he knew to have been an acquaintance of both Eames and Gajic himself. She was a thirty-something, red-headed, wore terrible blood-red lipstick and smelled like moth repellent. Her name was Minerva Brennan, and even with her platform heels she was a head shorter than Arthur, yet she looked like a nasty opponent in hand-to-hand combat.

“Why didn’t we take Ariadne?” Arthur asked Cobb when they were walking towards the London hotel where apparently a whole floor was reserved for the mission preparation.

“I managed to convince Eames to keep her away. She doesn’t deserve this.” Cobb’s voice was flat, resigned. Arthur wanted to tell him that he _will_ get back to his children very soon, just as soon as this stupid job was over – but somehow the thought felt distant again. Arthur sincerely hoped it was true and fantasized briefly about shaking Eames against a wall until he said he should at least have spared Cobb, for all the hell the man had already been through.

“You should have tried to escape,” Arthur said. “Eames is an asshole.”

“He finished the inception while I was stuck in limbo. I owe him more than I can repay.”

Then again, as an extractor Cobb really had no equal.

Walking through the rain, Arthur remembered he hated London. He had only been there once – with his ex-girlfriend, on a holiday that had gone wrong from the start. The flight had been late, their luggage got lost, they had found mice in their five-star hotel room, most of the underground had been suspended because of rain all weekend and every restaurant they had visited had been substandard. On the way home, they had broken up.

The MI6-booked hotel seemed nice enough, though. The gigantic, Edwardian lobby lead to a lift, and at first glance Arthur realised they had been booked the suite floor. The corridors were wider, everything from the dark blue carpet to the dim spotlights against the dark flower pattern wallpaper spelled refurbished wealth. Not so Edwardian but hey, you could not get everything.

They met up in the biggest conference room; Cobb took his place in front of the whiteboard and rest of them sat down.

“Right. We all know the mark already, so some of Arthur’s job is already done.” Cobb wrote _Radu Gajic_ on the whiteboard. Below: _How to cure the virus._

“How do you know it can be cured?” Minerva Brennan asked immediately. She was sitting next to Eames. Arthur noticed they were sharing a notebook.

“Because it’s a contagious virus,” Cobb replied. “Not terribly contagious like flu, apparently it lost some of the influenza features in the mutation process. You can get it from another person’s blood, saliva or other excretion, but it doesn’t fly through the air. To be safe, they have to have something to protect themselves from their own weapon, otherwise using it would be too dangerous.”

“A vaccine?” Yusuf asked. Arthur had not had a chance to exchange a single word with the chemist, but his fake smile proved that he was feeling as awful as the rest of them.

“Possibly,” Cobb replied. “But MI6’s intel suggests they also have a cure. There is always a chance that the virus starts mutating once it starts spreading, and a vaccination will need to be a continuous effort to keep up with that. It’s too risky even for terrorists.”

“Antibiotics, then?” Yusuf asked.

“They don’t work on viruses. It’s something more creative.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably connected to Somnacin. Something tremendously advanced, quite possibly chemistry-based. Like a way to break the cellular structure of the virus. Like a poison that only works on them. We don’t know. But we know for sure that Gajic does. Hence, we need to get the information out of him.”

“How, exactly?” Arthur spoke up. He felt Eames turning to stare at him, along with the rest of them.

“Well, extraction,” Cobb said.

“You know as well as I do that it’s not going to be anywhere near a normal extraction. We are talking about Gajic here. How are we going to get anything out of him? He is beyond militarised, he is the god damn dream world himself.”

“Thank you very much for your insight, Arthur, we are all quite aware of that.”

Arthur shot Eames a look he hoped said _I will punch your nose in._ “Can someone answer my question?”

“First of all, we have to catch him when he is already sleeping, natural sleep,” Cobb said. “There is some proof that the mark is more likely to remain unaware when brought under from natural sleep rather than being drugged to unconsciousness. Then we will just take it from there.”

 “Sounds promising.”

“We’ll have to go down three levels. Anything short of that won’t go deep enough to break his defences.”

Yusuf and Arthur groaned at once, Minerva gave a blank face.

“Three levels is not possible,” she said.

“Trust me, it is,” Cobb said.

“With the small added detail that if you die in the dream, you end up in limbo,” Arthur added. He thought everyone deserved to know.

“Not necessarily, or I hope at least,” Yusuf said. “I have some ideas on how to improve the compound. I started working on it right after,” he glanced at Cobb, “well, and – I have a compound almost ready for testing.”

“There are a lot of unknown factors here. I don’t like it.”

“I am glad that you share your feelings with us, Arthur, thank you.” Eames was smirking _again,_ as if the whole thing was some sort of a joke. “However, as it appears we are slightly short of choices.”

“ _You_ are out of choices,” Arthur corrected. “ _We_ got dragged in.”

Minerva looked at Eames, then Arthur, the rest of them, apparently registering the fact that they all knew something she didn’t. For a moment Arthur expected her to ask, but she pressed her lips into a thin line. “Right. And after we have entered Gajic’s dream straight from his normal sleeping state, and are on our way experimentally going three levels under by using a compound that may or may not throw us in limbo if we die, how exactly do we come about unravelling this secret?”

“We don’t know yet,” Cobb said. “This is as far as we have got for now. Arthur needs to start on his work, bring myself and Eames up to speed, and hopefully we will be able to come up with a plan soon and get you started on the levels. Meanwhile, Yusuf can finish with the compound and I will test it myself before the day of the job.”

Arthur felt a headache starting to creep in. “How much time do we have? I need a room with a secure server access.”

“It’s already been set up for you, darling,” Eames said. “We have twenty-nine hours until Gajic will be staying at a Paris hotel for business, which is about as close as he’ll ever come to this country again.”

“I haven’t slept for eighteen!”

“Best if you get to work then.”

 

xx

Finding something worth exploiting out of Gajic was like trying to arrange sand particles in the desert. He was a rich, successful former and current criminal, paranoid as all of them were, and the fact that he had staged his death and carried on under a fake identity did not help things. Arthur went through all of his official records methodically including every official note made on his company, plainly called Arrow, and found a load of nothing, as expected. He read MI6’s report and didn’t find anything he didn’t already know. He hacked into Gajic’s bank accounts and emails but they could have been those of any father of two who owned a company. After finding out that Gajic indeed did have two kids and a wife, Arthur went through even their records from the marriage certificate to the kids’ school marks, and found nothing. It was the most boring part of the point man’s work, to try and find out something that quite possibly did not even exist. After ten hours, Arthur managed to track down some Serbian medical records that indicated that Gajic had been treated for severe anger management issues prior to the Yugoslavian war, before the family had moved to Britain. Hardly a surprise and certainly not something that could be exploited on its own. Arthur made a note of it anyway.

By the time he had resorted to going through Gajic’s phone bills, he was so fed up with the work that he briefly considered emergency evacuating through the fifth floor window and disappearing into West End. He had not seen anyone, not even Cobb, since he had started his work. He had not slept or eaten. He had no idea what the rest of the team did – Yusuf was probably working on the compound and the rest receiving debriefing from MI6 regarding Paris. Arthur’s mind conjured an image of Cobb and Minerva sitting in front of MI6 officers, and Eames snoring away in his hotel room. Topless and wearing blue pyjama bottoms. Arthur closed his eyes, opened them again and tried to concentrate on the phone logs on the bill. Numbers kept on jumping from one row to another.

_I need more time. This is not going to work._

Someone pushed a paper cup full of coffee in front of Arthur. Arthur spun around his chair, grabbed the wrist reflexively and swore when he realised it was Eames. He let go but didn’t miss the twitch of Eames’ lips.

“I brought you a croissant too but considering how you reacted at the coffee, I am slightly afraid of handing it to you.”

Arthur looked at the mug. “Are you trying to poison me?”

Something odd passed through Eames’ features. He tensed his shoulders and threw the paper bag with croissant on the table. “It would be most counter-effective at present.”

“Why, then?” Bringing breakfasts was not normal Eames behaviour, even if Arthur felt slightly embarrassed to press the matter.

Eames shrugged and took a seat on the other side of the table. He was holding a coffee of his own. “I went to get breakfast and thought I could get you something as well.”

“It’s night.”

“It’s five in the morning in fact.”

“Shit. When are we leaving?”

“In the afternoon.”

“Right.”

“Have you found anything?”

Arthur considered if he could get Eames out of the room just by asking him to go. He was already tired and irritated, and he was not ready to listen to the mockery that Eames would no doubt shoot at him as soon as he found out he had nothing.

“He’s got anger management issues,” Arthur mumbled and focused on his screen again. Maybe if he kept on ignoring Eames, he would go away.

“He choked me unconscious on our first job together because I called him a baldie,” Eames said. “I am rather aware of this particular feature. Anything else?”

“No.”

Silence.

“Nothing else?”

“He is very meticulous at covering his tracks, Mr Eames. I am working on it, trust me.”

“Hmm.”

Under Eames’ unsettling stare, it took Arthur an embarrassing five minutes to identify Gajic’s wife’s number, his children’s number and his old mother’s number. He also tracked down the numbers of Gajic’s closest colleague, the Chinese co-CEO, as well as some suspicious contacts in Serbia. Arthur would need to dig up information on each of them separately.

There, with Eames staring at him across the table and Arthur’s brain trying to swell out of his skull, he saw it. Another number to which Gajic had made frequent calls.

It took him a few minutes to track it down. The name Liu Huang came up. An eighty-something Mandarin man with no presence on the internet, probably not even knowledge of what internet was. It did not make a lot of sense. Arthur connected to his master server at a warehouse he was renting in Chicago for the purpose, where he had stored a lot of useful information, including a mirror of some stolen Chinese population records they had needed for a job a few years back. After cross-checking Liu’s name, Arthur found his only daughter, his one sister, his dead wife – and one grandchild: Ti Huang. A woman, born in 1980 in a town close to where Liu Huang was claimed to live. Moved to the States in early 2000 and started her own security business, later on moved back to China. _She is keeping her phone in her grandfather’s name. Why?_

Arthur kept on reading, his heart was picking up on speed. “Have you ever heard of a company called F4F?”

“Am I supposed to have?”

“It’s China’s biggest security company.”

“I thought Arrow was, actually.”

“It was three years ago. This competitor has taken over.”

“And?” Eames got up and walked behind Arthur to take a look at his screen.

Arthur pointed at the number. “He’s sent F4F’s CEO twenty-six texts a day, on average. Well, officially he’s sent them to the CEO’s eighty-year-old granddad but I doubt it.”

“Bloody hell,” Eames muttered. “Did you actually calculate that?”

“It was an approximation.” Arthur frowned at the screen irritably. “Some phone calls, too, but mainly texts.”

“That’s rather dodgy. Can you pull up the content?"

“That’s going to take more work.”

“Try. I’ll get you another croissant if you manage.”

“No thanks.” Arthur straightened himself up in the chair. “Is it a possibility in any way that you could get out of here so I can work in peace?"

“Sure, darling,” Eames put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder and squeezed. Arthur closed his eyes and started counting to ten. “Anything to make you supple.”

 

xx 

Arthur wrote Ti Huang’s name on the whiteboard and felt smug despite the fact that his stomach was upside down from staying up and drinking coffee, and his eyes were so dry from staring at the computer that he imagined they looked like raisins.

“Three years back, Arrow was the biggest security company in China. Then, the pole position was stolen by another company called F4F. Ti Huang is the CEO of that company.” Arthur glanced at Eames, who was sitting at the edge of his seat. _Let’s see if this shuts you up._ “Gajic is in regular contact with her, by phone calls and texts. He had covered his tracks by contacting her on a phone that is owned by her grandfather, probably thinking that even if someone tracked down the activity, they would not be able to pull enough records to find out who he really is contacting. I did, and I managed to get the content of the text messages out as well.” Arthur didn’t say how much MI6’s money and his nerves it had taken. It was worth the look on Eames’ face.

“I expected them to have some kind of deal in the brewing, perhaps a merger,” he pressed on. “But the truth was far better. They are actually in a _relationship._ ”

“Beautiful,” Eames said and clapped his hands together. “Anger management issues and a secret lover. Now I feel we are finally getting somewhere.”

“He is very jealous,” Arthur said and pushed a folder across the table towards Eames. “The message logs are here, see for yourself. He is constantly paranoid about her cheating on him.”

“That is a bit rich from someone who is already married,” Minerva said. “Does his wife know?”

“No. Gajic is hysterical about her finding out. She knows too much and they don’t have a prenup. If she found out, Gajic would risk losing not just his kids but also half of what he owns. Also, Gajic apparently dislikes his wife, or at least likes Huang to think he does. There is a lot of talk about her money-wasting habits and obsession about cleaning, even mockery of the way she looks.”

“Brilliant, Arthur,” Eames said, reading the file. “Do you think we can work on the concept of revenge? It’s a prominent element in the Balkan culture.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Arthur replied and unsuccessfully tried to interpret whether Eames’ compliment was genuine or not.

“He’s right,” Minerva interrupted. “He didn’t mean the war. It runs deeper than that. Revenge is about maintaining honour.”

 _What do you know about what he means?_ Arthur thought, suddenly irritated.

“How do we work on a concept of revenge?” Yusuf asked. “And especially why?”

To that, Arthur knew the answer. “Because this is Gajic, not your average mark. If we put anything that even distantly resembles a bank or a safe into the dream, I suspect it will turn bloodshed in an instant.”

Cobb nodded. “His subconscious is, by now, probably completely wired up against all normal methods. We cannot just walk in and expect to find what we want. That’s why we have to go deeper and do everything in our power to avoid him going lucid. We need a plot, similar to—“ he glanced at Arthur and fell silent.

“Indeed,” Eames said.

“Can someone explain me in which job have you previously gone three levels?” Minerva said. “Judging by the looks on your faces, it didn’t turn out well.”

“It was an inception, and it worked out _just_ fine."Cobb stood up and left the room.

 _“_ An _inception?”_

Eames looked at Arthur over his papers and _fucking winked_. For the second time, Arthur considered escaping through the window.

 

xx

Eames had his plan ready within the next three hours. Arthur took a brief nap because he could not stand straight any longer, and when he was back in the conference room, Minerva was discussing level structures with Cobb. Yusuf was snoring away with his face against the table.

“Where’s Eames?” Arthur asked.

“In the server room, watching videos of Huang.”

“He’s going to forge her?”

“Yes.”

The plan was impressive, much better than Arthur thought he would have come up with on such short notice.

First level, Cobb and Eames had decided, was all about trying to handle Gajic. He was bound to be the most resistant on that level, and there they had the smallest amount of time on their hands. In order to put the mark’s mind at ease (if that ever was possible in Gajic’s case) and pull his mind away from homicidal thoughts, they had settled on a slightly more complex-than-normal rural town, something that had a Serbian air to it, hopefully guiding Gajic’s mind towards fond memories from the past. The tricky bit was to make it complex enough for the projections – Minerva had said she could work it out by using repetitive content. At the heart of this town was the church, and this was where Eames believed the projection of Ti Huang would be discovered. Many of the late-night texts Gajic and Huang had exchanged were about Huang’s fascination with European churches, including Gajic’s lengthy descriptions of the beauty of Serbian Orthodox churches. The couple had even made half-hearted plans to visit the village of Gajic’s family some summer, so that Gajic could show Huang around.

The whole point of discovering Huang’s projection was to open up Gajic’s overprotected mind to process the topic of Huang with more ease. In all likelihood, he was mentally set up to protect himself against any possible attempts to find out about his secret relationship so that barrier needed to be overcome.

Moving down on levels was the trickiest part. Cobb believed that if a PASIV would be presented to Gajic in the dream without a context, the dream would turn lucid instantly. The man was too used to shared dreaming, too aware of its dangers.

Luckily, Gajic had not been able to resist showing shared dreaming to Huang. Judging by their texts, he had not spoken anything of its actual uses but rather presented is as an exclusive form of entertainment. What excited Eames to no end and made Arthur very weary was the fact that Gajic had actually taken Huang to dreams to have sex with her in ways that were not possible in reality. Worse, they had appeared to have replicated several churches as their dream sex scenes. Poking into this private fantasy was potentially very efficient but also quite a gamble. It was impossible to know what exactly they had done in those dreams, or how Gajic would react. Yet, setting up a level with a church in the middle, full of priests with PASIVs would be the best possible idea to get Gajic first of all to find his way where they wanted him to be – the church – without having to force him, and then to go one level deeper without his internal alarm bells ringing off. The most difficult part was to figure out how they would manage to get the whole team to go down with them – but Eames believed that he would be able to make Gajic want the priests to accompany the couple into a dream. “I’ll improvise something,” he said. “I’ll tell him that it’ll be like a kinky sacrifice mass. The priests will come and watch them having sex.” Arthur had wanted to retch at the thought, but the team trusted Eames.

On the second level, then, Eames was supposed to forge Huang. They intended to take advantage of the fact that the Gajic-Huang romance was spiced with a very strong competitive edge, springing from the fact that they were each other’s worst rivals. Although Gajic, judging by the texts, appeared to be very captivated by, possibly even in love with Huang, he generally did not trust her. In particular, he did not trust her faithfulness. To wind Gajic up against Huang was best done by making him dream of her cheating on him and mentioning Gajic’s marriage as the reason for her unfaithfulness. Eames and Cobb had decided the drama should take place in an enormous nightclub. “It’s likely to get less violent than a city in which you have cars to crash on you and buildings to jump off from.”

The idea was good on principle, but when Eames presented its details to the team, Arthur nearly got off his seat to wind a kick on his face. Although he had resigned to having to carry out this impossible mission and possibly not survive alive, he had _not_ signed up for having to play the boyfriend of Eames-forged-as-Huang.

“Huang needs someone to cheat on with, and out of us only your and Yusuf’s faces are not familiar to Gajic. Although all of us can mask ourselves a little bit, I am the only forger and we cannot take the chance that Gajic will recognize, say, Cobb. That would be the end of it. Yusuf has to stay on the first level, so you are the only option,” was Eames’ reasoning. He even took the trouble to make it sound professional.

“Besides, you will make a tremendously stunning secret lover.”

Well, professional up to a degree.

Going down the final level was supposed to be coaxed out of Gajic by trying to make him want to find out something about Arthur. Eames was going to convince Gajic that Arthur possesses damaging information about him, hoping Gajic would get paranoid enough to want to extract information out of Arthur by means that were most natural to him – by going into a dream. The final level would then be Arthur’s dream.

On the final level, Eames would forge Gajic’s wife, Sandra. She would be dying because of the bioweapon – Cobb and Eames believed that level three would be deep enough to bring up the topic of bioweapon without alerting Gajic’s consciousness. Hopefully, his anger for Huang would remain, his flair for revenge would be provoked and the team would have survived that far without being killed. Arthur’s job would be to find Huang’s projection from the map and bring him to rage around while Gajic’s wife was lying in her death bed. Cobb would be directing the events from the sidelines by playing a doctor. All they would then need was to let Gajic disclose him how to save his wife.

The kicks were going to be arranged as follows:

The dreamer of the first level would be Yusuf, so he would need to stay on in that level. The church’s blasphemous design contained a big four-poster bed where normally was the altar. Chairs would be conveniently provided around the altar so that the priests could easily surround the couple, who would be on the bed. The floor would be lifted around the bed just so that it was possible to fit chairs around it but right behind them there would be a one foot drop. All it would take was to sit Yusuf the priest down on the other side as rest of them, and he could kick the bed, which would then push everyone else’s chair down, then grab hold of Gajic and follow suit by leaning back. Projection-Huang would remain asleep on the bed.

The nightclub’s dreamer would be Minerva. The kick was supposed to be a drop from what Eames thought should be a dance floor made of glass and Minerva thought should be just a glass ceiling. Either way, they would just need to arrange Gajic’s interrogation of Arthur to take place on the glass, and have the place as clear of projections as possible. The rest would pretend to be Gajic’s team, Cobb and Minerva even as themselves, and it would only be natural for Minerva to stay back in case someone tried to come in while the rest of them would go under to “find out about Arthur." She would shoot the glass to provide the kick when the time was right.

The final dream would be Arthur’s. The last kick was a level design based kick, much like the one in the final level of the Fischer job – suggested for recycling by Eames. Cobb agreed that the kick mechanism should be the same, however pointed out that the terrain was unsuitable against militarisation, as had been proved in the Fischer job, and made Minerva plan an alternative location with a similar kick. Once again, Minerva shot back with a battery of annoyed questions about this mysterious inception job that apparently everyone else had been on, but when she realised nobody was going to talk, went on and designed a very passable level. This would be an underground hospital, no windows. The idea was to restrict the movement of Gajic’s projections; they were dangerous enough in a contained space. Outside the building, the hospital would be surrounded by underground tunnels full of dynamite. There would be no access to the tunnels from inside of the hospital, save an emergency hatch in case something went wrong. The detonator was located inside the hospital, and all they needed to do for the kick was to set it off when the time was right: the tunnels would collapse and the whole floor would drop.

All in all, it was a remarkably competent three-level plan that would have made Arthur intrigued to see it being carried out – another job only possible for an all-stars team – if there only had not been for that cursed detail of him being forced to play Eames’ boyfriend.


	2. Dream level one (Village/Yusuf)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have [sonnss](http://sonnss.tumblr.com) to thank for beta and [lorichelle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lorichelle/pseuds/lorichelle) for lots of useful weapon-related information (any mistakes would be mine though :)
> 
>  **WARNINGS for swearing, potentially offensive use of language and for this chapter in particular, potentially offensive religious references.** Contains violence, blood, torture and illness, all happening in the heat of a job, seriously skip this one if you feel queasy easily, it gets pretty hardcore. Also references to OC/Eames in the past but Eames didn't like it, so don't you be discouraged either!

 

 

  
**II**

**Dream level one**

**(Village/Yusuf)**

 

“Well, at least we got this far,” Yusuf said when Cobb halted the team at the end of what must have been the millionth narrow alleyway between spiky bushes and white brick houses.

“Here’s when it gets tricky,” Minerva said.

They were at the edge of the town square which was not as clear of projections as the maze of roads had been. The first one Eames paid attention to was an elderly woman selling fruits and vegetables. She was arguing with another projection animatedly, quite possibly about the price of the food — while carrying around a massive jungle knife. Her elderly mother, currently arranging cucumbers and tomatoes, had an axe wrapped around her back and if Eames wasn’t completely off, a combat knife was reflecting sunlight just under her right wrist.

Further away, three men were sitting on a bench, drinking coffee and leaning against Uzis. The street cleaner was sporting a two-barrel shotgun wrapped on his back and the tractor that drove past was pulling a cannon.

_Gajic, you have a sick fantasy._

“All right, get ready,” Cobb said and checked the clip before hiding his handgun under his jacket. “Let’s hope this will go as we want it to. If any of you see Gajic here, walk the other way immediately.”

There was a safe underground passage through the square and straight into the churchyard but Minerva had built it for emergency only. The whole point of the square was to test Gajic’s projections before entering the church. If Cobb could walk among the villagers and not get shot, chances were that the rest of them could. If the rest of the team could, their estimated success rate for carrying out the plan would improve remarkably.

After Cobb had taken the first ten or so steps, the veg woman’s mother turned to stare at him. Cobb headed straight on and she turned back to her cucumbers. Eames could feel the whole team sweating and not just from the sun. Even Arthur was fidgeting on his feet.

“They are going to be like this on every level, suspicious and over-armed,” Minerva said. “We are so dead. It’s just a question of when.”

“No, we are going three levels down precisely because Gajic’s resistance is strong. We pass this square without getting shot and we can make it through the job,” Arthur said unkindly. “Just concentrate on keeping yourself together.”

“Besides, nobody is going to _actually_ die this time, we’ve tested this compound and it’s safe,” Yusuf said, and continued with “What?” when Minerva narrowed her eyes at him.

“Don’t worry at all, Minerva,” Eames said turned his head towards the sunshine, covering his eyes with his hand. “It’ll all go down brilliantly.” He had not expected the village to bathe in a scorching heat but sucked in the rays nevertheless. It was nice to be warm for a little while, even if the feeling was not exactly real. “Absolutely brilliantly.”

Well, it was also possible that Eames was making a show of sunbathing because he knew Arthur was looking at him and getting annoyed, if not at Eames’ nonchalant attitude then by the very least at the splendid outfit he had chosen for himself: loose, dirty farmer jeans, sleeveless white shirt (equally dirty and running high enough to reveal a batch of his stomach), an eighties style cap and _haha_ red wooden clogs.

Cobb managed to avert the gaze of two further villagers and the team watched him disappear between the market stalls.

“It’s working. Let’s go,” Arthur said. “Watch each other’s backs.”

“What do I do if they start shooting at me after all?” Yusuf looked a bit like he was walking into his execution.

“Run,” Eames suggested. “We’ll cover for you.”

The team spread out as much as possible so that they wouldn’t look like a group of tourists. Eames’ plan had been to go and check out the vegetables quickly, in other words to get a closer view on the jungle knife – but he changed his plans with a ridiculous shiver when he realised Arthur was tailing him against all prior agreement and common sense.

“Your shoes are out of context,” Arthur said as soon as they were out of anyone else’s hearing range.

“Why, Arthur, I’d never have guessed the level of attention you pay to my outfit. Thank you.”

“Change them.”

A projection — a man behind a meat stall — glanced at Eames and Eames gave him a good-natured nod before dropping his gaze. “My shoes?”

“Yes.”

Eames closed his eyes in concentration and changed his clogs into pink stilettos for a split second before going for a pair of wellies covered in shit. Arthur looked like he needed something to chew on and took a sharp left, leaving Eames to make the rest of his way alone. Eames bit back a smirk and filed the moment away as a success. He was certain that nobody apart from the detail-obsessed Arthur would ever have been wound up by his shoe choices and that included both Gajic and his projections.

Only if it was equally easy to – wind him up in some _other ways._ Sadly, Arthur being Arthur that was a concept probably as distant to him as dressing down, making funny faces or getting so drunk that you didn’t remember how you got home.

The less desperate part of his brain was aware that fooling around on a job that was probably going to cost him his life was not an idea he’d congratulate himself for later. But precisely because it was going to cost him his life, Eames couldn’t help himself.

 _Maybe this is the last time Arthur will ever be —_  a flash of fear brought Eames conscious of where his mind was wandering and he forced the thought away. _Just keep on walking._

The square was bigger than he had thought. For a moment, the church tower was hidden behind the trees and Eames was not sure which way to go. Then he spotted Arthur’s back further away and made his way through the rows of stalls to follow him. Watching Arthur’s retreating figure also gave him a good opportunity to check what had been the point man’s idea of camouflaging as a village man from the Eighties.

Arthur was wearing normal, suitably outdated jeans, a simple red T-shirt and rather dirty sneakers. It was indeed a very passable attempt at not catching anyone’s eye, except of course Eames’.  He had to pull together his last inches of self-respect to keep his eyes off Arthur’s backside. _I might be pathetic but not that pathetic yet._

The plain, awful truth was that Dom Cobb’s chosen point man was the first and only person in the world to have introduced Eames to the feeling of embarrassment. This fact, and the background story of said fact were something Eames would not talk about even if he was shot in the kneecaps and bathed in acid, however he had long since given up trying to lie to himself that it was all normal around Arthur.

Cobb had known Eames from before, from the times when he was new to the industry (if already famous for his talent), Mal was still alive and Arthur was probably studying away in some high school. In fact, the job with Eames had been one of Cobb’s first jobs – as an architect, as he had started out. Cobb’s extractor at the time had realised a pressing need for a very good forger and recruited Eames.

Some time later, when Cobb was already experimenting as an extractor, he had run into a similar situation and contacted Eames. That time around, Eames had been introduced to Cobb’s new point man — Arthur.

Eames’ initial thought had been: _A kid with too much hair gel._

 _An extra from Matrix_ had been his second thought. He had even voiced that one, prompting a dirty look out of Arthur (who must not have been more than twenty-three or so at the time). _Appallingly cute in that over-priced suit and who the hell makes pants that tight anyway,_ his third. _I wonder how his hair would look if combed forward,_ fourth. _Get a grip, Eames, if you want to ogle at kids like him go to City of London, don’t do it on a job._

With a healthy amount of effort, Eames had managed to forget Arthur’s disturbingly good looks almost completely, but then he had been forced to witness Arthur taking down three six-feet-tall men while holding the PASIV suitcase in one hand. The last man to drop had been defeated with a side kick straight to the neck. Eames had watched the fabric of Arthur’s pants stretch and that had been the first time he had felt it: _embarrassment_.

His instinctive reaction had been to start taking the piss out of Arthur whenever he got a chance and even when there really wasn’t an occasion. To his satisfaction, he had found out that Arthur was extremely easy to bring to the boiling point. In the beginning any stupid smirk had sufficed and a wink had qualified for serious teeth-gritting if not a few pencils snapped in half. Eames always took it only so far that he got a bit scared that Arthur would soon break into his room at night and murder him in his sleep. Acting extra polite for a while, Eames let the dust settle and then started over.

Over the first three jobs they worked together in, Arthur developed a thicker skin and started purposefully ignoring Eames’ smirks. So Eames invented new ways. Sarcasm often worked. When they were under for any practice run or a standard job, Eames took every opportunity to do better than Arthur. Bonus points if the point man screwed something up in the process, like that time when Eames “accidentally” made him trip in front of seven hit-men and proceeded to shoot them before they managed to kill Arthur. The poor sod had been _shaking_ with rage.

Cobb and the rest thought Arthur and Eames hated each other. It was half true, of course. Eames was quite positive that Arthur hated him more than he hated bright colours, lack of mathematical specificity and being proven wrong. The thought gave Eames a nice thrill, only beaten by the shiver he got from the frown Arthur shot his way every time they met. Arthur never frowned like that at anyone else. In fact, Eames did not recall Arthur ever being so genuinely pissed off with anyone other than him.

It pleased Eames, and the fact that it pleased him embarrassed him. His consolation had been that at least nobody else knew about it.

Then the cursed Fischer job came along.

It had all started exactly the same way as before. Cobb and Arthur had been practically joined in the hip at the time, and seeing Cobb in Mombasa had made Eames almost sick with excitement, like he was a bloody teenager going for a school trip knowing his crush would be in the same bus.

Technically speaking, the job had been a personal success for Eames. He had drafted such a great plan that Arthur had actually gone and complimented it, against his better judgement no doubt. This had given Eames a perfect opportunity to thank Arthur for his _condescension, hah,_ and watch his trademark smirk stretch Arthur’s nerves almost to the breaking point. The time when Eames had nearly tripped Arthur’s chair over was an even dearer memory to him – immature yes but the freaked-out-spider move Arthur performed had made it _so_ worthwhile. And then there was that warehouse and Arthur stuck shooting sniper-distance projections with an assault rifle, and in a moment of inspiration Eames had come up with a grenade launcher.

Most importantly, Eames had been the one to finish the inception while Cobb was too busy sorting out his own issues. Although the team never had the chance to discuss this particular fact, Eames was sure Arthur had processed it.

Sadly however, the events of dream level two had fucked him over so badly that all his hard-earned accomplishments eventually became just a faded memory underneath that all-too-familiar embarrassment.

They had been preparing to go under again, save Arthur who had to stay back in his dream. Although Eames trusted Arthur’s ability to guard them more than anyone else’s, he had been more than a little worried to stick in another IV with the knowledge that not only Arthur had to deal with a neverending flow of militarised projections but one well-aimed shot at Eames’ sleeping body would mean a lifetime in limbo.

He had been prepared to put the IV on himself but as he had lied down, Arthur had appeared above him. It had taken Eames all his effort to keep breathing when he had felt Arthur’s warm hand grab his forearm gently, start rolling up his sleeve.

“Security’s gonna run you down hard,” Eames had said and rushed to help with the sleeve, more to mask his reaction than anything else.

Arthur’s eyes had been on Eames’ arm but he had smiled. _Smiled._ “And I will lead them on a merry chase.”

 _Oh my god, is he flirting with me?_ Eames had thought, stupidly, and let his head drop on the carpet. “Just be back before the kick.”

They had locked eyes. Eames’ body had gone red-hot in a millisecond. _He_ is _flirting with me. Oh my god._

“Go to sleep, Mr Eames.”

Then Arthur had stuck in the needle and Eames had blacked out.

After the job, the rest of the team had left the luggage carousel before Arthur whose oversized suit collection obviously did not fit in one suitcase. Eames only had to stay back to get an opportunity to catch him alone. Working entirely on instinct and probably because he was still feeling light-headed from the job, he had approached the man with nothing but a vague idea of forcing him to discuss that smile and yes Eames had been very aware that he was heading towards the embarassmentland again, but by the time warning bells had gone off in his head, he had already opened his mouth.

“Quite a journey, don’t you think?”

Arthur had conjured up another of his Eames-I-hate-you frowns. “Until next time, Mr Eames,” he had said, taken his stuff and nearly run out.

_Maybe he wasn’t flirting after all._

For a short while Eames had considered going after him. If for nothing else, at least to provoke a fist fight. But Arthur was too clever, and even though Eames had managed to mask his infuriating — he was not entirely sure what to call it, perhaps a desire (crush being a far too embarrassing word and all other options too frightening) — towards Arthur, if Eames had actually gone and _run after Arthur,_ the point man would inevitably have put two and two together.

That, Arthur’s fingers on Eames’ forearm and the smile on his lips aside, was not. An. Option. Period. Eames did not even want to think what Arthur would do with such information. Whatever it would be, Eames would never hear the end of it. Never.

Sometimes he wondered if Arthur ever desired anyone, if there was any person in the world that made his heart beat faster. Maybe he had a girlfriend, some skinny little brunette that studied Medicine and liked to massage Arthur’s feet after a particularly stressful job (which she had probably been led to believe was absolutely legal) and who made helpless little whining noises when Arthur had sex with her. The thought of it made Eames want to murder for sport.

Later on, Eames had become grateful for not having followed Arthur. The point man had left the airport in peace, oblivious to the fact that Eames had been manhandled into a car as soon as he had reached the main exit. Arthur had in fact been in peace for six whole days while all that terrible crap had taken place and Eames had flown into the UK and out again, gone and fetched Cobb, Yusuf, Minerva and finally Arthur.

He had considered leaving Arthur out entirely but at the end of the day it had not been an option, for two reasons. One, because the job was nearly impossible as it was, and two, because Eames was simply unable to pass an opportunity to clash with Arthur again, even if it meant bringing him to mortal peril. Especially knowing what was at stake. Especially after that smile. Correction: especially because Eames apparently had lost his higher brain functions because of that smile.

Even on the day of the job, as Eames was walking through the Serbian dream village just ten steps away from Arthur and trying to keep his pace stable and breathing calm, he could not tear his mind away from that one smile. One bloody smile and he became unable to tell his arse from his feet any longer. It was, as previously stated, _embarrassing._

“Hey,” someone called.

It was a tall, bearded, deranged-looking projection farmer holding an assault rifle way too expensive for someone in his profession. He was looking at Arthur with a frown. _Shit._ Thinking quickly, Eames subtly made himself look even more farmer-like, a big old man he had once used as a forge, and walked to the projection to get his attention.

“How are you doing?” Eames said and the man turned around.

“Who’s that guy?” He pointed at Arthur. “I think we need to get him.”

“Oh, that.” Eames pretended to be surprised and clapped a comradely hand on the projection’s shoulder. “Nevermind him. He’s a cousin of mine, here to visit his poor old grandmother. I know what you’re saying — he’s from the town and his no-good father has been nothing but a bother to the family so even the son’s a bit wet behind the ears. You just let the country life teach him.”

The man tore his eyes away from Arthur to glare at Eames’ hand on his shoulder. Eames saw the man’s fingers twitching around the gun. “Who are you?”

Eames tried to laugh but it came out as a cough. _Shit._ “Are you suffering from memory loss? Come on, go back to work. Let’s catch up in the evening, I’ll show you a bottle of something that this cousin of mine brought. After a couple of shots I guarantee you’ll forgive him.”

“I still think we should shoot him,” the man insisted. They followed Arthur’s painfully slow pace until he disappeared behind a stall.  “And that red-headed girl I saw earlier. She was funny as well.”

“Oh,  don’t worry about her, she’s my cousin’s fiancée. Completely harmless.”

“I doubt anyone is harmless.” Eames watched the farmer touch the fabric on top of his pocket. _What does he have in there, grenades?_ Unfortunately it was a tangible possibility.

“Let’s go find them,” the farmer decided and started walking towards where Eames knew the team was waiting for him.

Eames followed his steps, thinking furiously. “Hey,” he reached for the man’s sleeve. “If you think they need to be dead, I have no problem doing it for you. That kind of people are no good for a place like this anyway.”

The farmer yanked himself free with a grunt. _Here we go,_ Eames thought, stepped in front of him and grabbed both of his shoulders. “But he _is_ my cousin. You should leave the honour of finishing him off to me.”

The projection was straight-on squinting into Eames’ eyes, and Eames had no choice than to look back.

“Who are you anyway?”

“Is that a way to talk to your friends?” Eames averted.

“I —“ the projection dropped his gaze like he was trying to remember something.

“I know you want to shoot them, I want as well. Just let me do it, they’re my family. I’ll bring the bodies to you if you like.” Eames pulled out his gun for good measure.

“Right… All right.” The farmer stepped back. “But do it soon.”

“Absolutely.” Eames turned to go. “I’ll be back right after you’ve heard the gunshots.”

He walked as fast as he unsuspiciously could, and bumped into Arthur right behind the corner.

“Why the hell were you taking so long?”

Eames pushed him out of the way, but not without a tiny smirk. “Saving your pretty little ass from an assault rifle, darling.” He turned to face Cobb. “I had a projection questioning me about Arthur and Minerva. It took me a considerable amount of bullshitting to talk him into letting me kill them instead of him coming over to do the deed.”

Cobb glanced around. “We need to speed up. Now.”

“This way,” Minerva pointed towards one of the alleys. “The path’s long but it leads straight to the church and you can’t see it from any other road. If it’s empty, we can run.”

Luck was on their side that time. The alleyway was deserted save a cat that ran into hiding as soon as he saw people approaching. Eames all but felt Arthur’s glare on his shoulder all the way. It made his insides itch.

The path ended in the small, empty backyard of the church, tailor-made to be nearly impossible to find for those who did not know the way.

“I’ll go first,” Cobb said. “Then Minerva, Yusuf, Arthur, Eames, five minute intervals each.”

Although the square test had been a success of sorts, Cobb did not want to take any risks with Gajic’s projections. Eames understood why – not only were the projections all armed to teeth but also suspicious of everything and apparently happy to start challenging conversations without prior notice.

In the church, Minerva had built three small rooms just behind the back door. The idea was that the team could infiltrate the church quietly, lynch any rival priests one by one in the small rooms and regroup before having to enter the church hall. Furthermore, one of the rooms was equipped with a remote system that enabled the team to lock down the whole church to keep more projections from entering. With any luck, they would only need to step out once more to fetch Huang’s projection and Gajic (in case the latter had not found his way into the church already).

Eames leaned against a nearby tree, suddenly aware that Arthur would be the second last to go and he would be the last one to go, with _five minute intervals._ Eames couldn’t recall any instance of having been alone with Arthur for five minutes with absolutely nothing to do. Also, topside MI6 had been hovering over them constantly, so if Arthur had anything to say that he had been keeping to himself – Eames struggled to keep up his face of bored nonchalance — it would probably come out as soon as the rest of the team would be out of hearing distance.

“You need to keep the current outfit until exactly the moment when you step into the church, then change into a priest,” Minerva reminded just before she headed after Cobb.

Yusuf waited until the door closed and glanced at Eames. “Are you ever going to tell how you ended up with the British Secret Service?” 

 _Great. Even Yusuf._ “I have worked with them before.” Eames shrugged. “I have a reputation there, so when they came across a problem that had to do with dreamshare, I was the natural first point of contact.”

“According to their own files, the last time you were in touch with them was when you helped a Russian agent to murder their own contact inside MI6, “Arthur said. “You are on their wanted list.”

Eames took this opportunity to grin at Arthur. “Minor details are easily forgotten in the face of true danger, darling.”

“They blackmailed you into this, right?” Yusuf said.

“They didn’t have to,” Eames lied. “I’m always happy to help.”

“I’m sure,” Arthur said and a tense silence followed. Eames kept watch at the door, Arthur had his attention on the alleyway in case someone was coming after them. Yusuf kept checking his watch as the minutes ticked, and finally left.

As soon as the door closed, Arthur abandoned his task. He turned to face Eames who absently noticed that Arthur was holding a Glock in both of his hands. His chin was pressed down slightly, solid gaze on Eames, who hoped his skin was not revealing something the rest of him did not want to disclose.

“Do I even dare to enquire what you are staring at?” Eames said when the moment stretched.

For a moment Arthur looked like he was about to make commentary about something he saw on Eames’ face but eventually, and unbelievably, he went for:

“Why did you smile at me like that when I put you under on the second level?”

 _What?_ Eames felt his smile dropping and forced it back. Arthur wanted to know why _he_ was smiling? Had he been smiling as well? _Bloody hell._ He had been so out of it, _nothing_ like his usual self-observant self. _And how was it that both of them knew what Arthur was talking about without him having to explain?_

“I didn’t smile at you, _you_ smiled at me,” Eames ended up replying and wanted to smack himself in the head for sounding like a pre-schooler trying to win an argument. “Why?”

“That’s what I was asking you,” Arthur said.

Eames glanced at his clock. Four and a half minutes left, and he _was_ able to collect himself and come out of this surprise conversation right way up.

“Arthur dear, I haven’t got the foggiest of where you are trying to get to or what who smiled at whom has to do with anything. I always smile at people. I am cheerful like that. You on the other hand have a default face that suggests you may have been sitting on a lemon since Monday last year.”

Someone was shouting in the distance. Arthur shifted on his feet and adjusted his grip on the handguns – an old tell of his that indicated he was unsure of what to do next. Eames felt a little better, _yes I can do this, I always can,_ and couldn’t resist taking a couple of steps towards Arthur so that they ended up standing just a foot apart.

“So, going back to my question on this rather irrelevant topic you so unexpectedly raised,” he said and observed Arthur’s eyes narrowing, “pray tell me why _did_ you smile at me like that? It was so uncharacteristic of you that I’ve barely recovered. _Go to sleep, Mr Eames.”_ Eames was surprised at how well he managed an Arthur imitation. _Got to try that again sometime._

“Eames,” Arthur growled and shuffled on his feet as if he was trying to decide whether to launch an assault or step away from the proximity.

“Yes?”

“I will make it clear, for once and for all, that whatever it is that you are trying to get out of me with this twisted game of yours, it’s not working. I am here for a job, not to jump at your whim as you seem to think everyone should. I don’t like you, you don’t mean anything to me, I am just _tolerating_ you because you are very good at what you do and that means I am forced to work with you from time to time, so do not make the mistake of thinking that I —“

Arthur’s eyes widened and his gaze shifted from Eames to something that was coming from behind. Eames didn’t have time to even touch his gun, let alone turn around, when Arthur had already lifted his arms on both sides of Eames’ head and shot seven times. Eames winced. In real life, he would have gone deaf.

The way Arthur was standing, arms extended, it looked almost like a hug. Eames imagined touching Arthur’s hips and pulling him closer. Arthur’s mouth was slightly open, his gaze now back on Eames. Dark and full of anger.

Then sanity took the better of Eames and he spun around. Arthur lowered his guns.

Six men and one woman were lying on the churchyard and bleeding slowly.

“Fuck Cobb's five minute intervals,” Arthur said. “We need to go into the church and lock it down, now.”

 

 

xx

Like Cobb and Minerva had suspected, Gajic was already in the church by the time the team arrived.

Contrary to their estimations, Gajic had already shot every single projection present in the building apart from projection Huang, whose presence was another surprise. Eames thought Gajic may actually have brought her with him. Either way, she was residing on the altar bed dressed in nothing but a tacky pink night gown, while Gajic paced back and forth the hall, apparently upset at the lockdown and trying to find more people to shoot.

“How’s this possible?” Minerva raged. “We didn’t take hours — he shouldn’t have been able to do all this in such a short time.”

“It’s Gajic,” Cobb replied. “We knew that there would be a surprise element in everything we’ve planned.”

“Why would he shoot priests?”

“Again we didn’t know how he’d behave as a mark. Apparently the dress code is _homicidal_.”

“The positive side is that now we won’t have to go through the trouble of shooting them ourselves,” Yusuf said.

“Yes, but he will probably shoot us too,” Arthur said.

“You are forgetting that I am here, love.” Eames nodded at Cobb. “I’ll go in first.“

“You do have a plan, right?”

“I’ll come up with something between now and when he pulls the trigger,” Eames promised and grabbed the door handle. Arthur snatched his hand away.

“That’s too dangerous,” he snapped.

“Oh, Father Arthur, I didn’t know —“ _Is he actually worried? Why?_

“Quit that crap.”

_Probably not._

“Eames, are you sure it’s going to work?” Cobb asked.

“Positive. He’s got his back on us now. I’ve got almost a second between stepping in and when he’s taken aim. Leave it to me.”

That time, Arthur didn’t step in to stop Eames as he pushed the door open and inhaled the old, chilly air of the church hall.

As anticipated, Gajic heard him and began turning around, but Eames started singing from the top of his lungs before the man had even taken aim.

The song was not a religious one. It was a Serbian love song, something that Gajic liked to listen according to Arthur’s research that Eames had been skimming through. This was all improvisation; Eames’ draft plan had involved starting some kind of a mass as soon as he walked in and his background plan had involved faking a demonic possession, but something in the atmosphere made him want to sing. That he knew the song was sheer luck. He had one drink-fuelled holiday in Belgrade to thank for that. _Perhaps I’ll write Dana a thank you card._

Eames sang all the way to the centre of the church and acknowledged Gajic’s presence by spreading his hands up above.

“Be blessed in the Church of Love!”

Gajic kept his aim, and for a moment Eames thought he might shoot after all.

“Who are you?”

“I am a messenger of love,” Eames pronounced with a holy tone and had to bite back a sudden laugh. The greatest thing about dream forging was that the weirdest things often worked best. The human subconscious followed logic that had nothing to do with how the waking world worked. Just like poor Fischer had failed to question how he would know a code for his father’s safe, it did not occur to Gajic to wonder what in the living hell was Church of Love. Eames went on to supply an explanation:

“The Church of Love is an exclusive society where the rituals heighten your senses, steal your mind and bring you and your loved one to realms of pleasure that you have not yet walked upon.” He stepped aside and gestured towards the altar, where the panting, rather brainless-looking Huang was sitting.

“I believe your _muse_ is already here, Mr Gajic.”

Gajic looked the way Eames was pointing and lowered his gun in apparent confusion.

“Ti,” Gajic said after a pause.

“Yes,” Huang said and waved her hand. “This church is as beautiful as you always told.”

“You are as beautiful as I always remembered.”

“Flatterer. What are you trying to achieve with these words of yours?” But she was laughing.

 _Now or never,_ Eames thought, and gestured at Cobb and the rest to come in.

Gajic’s first reaction was, unexpectedly, to start shooting. That time around, Eames was close enough to gently grab his wrist. “The Church of Love has many dedicated servants,” he told Gajic and wished he could have seen Arthur’s face. “Please, give us the pleasure of serving you. We can give you and your muse the treatment you deserve.”

“What treatment?” Gajic tried to yank his wrist free. “Let go of me.”

Eames knew this game, knew how to lead it. Granted, with Gajic it was more than a little scary to do – one misstep and they’d all be blown to hell. Eames smiled airily. “But Radu, my son, certainly you _do_ know all about the worshipping rituals of the Church of Love. You are one of the most devout members of this exclusive place of worship.” He wrapped his free arm around Gajic and started leading him towards the altar. “Dear Fathers, we are ready to begin.”

Eames broke into song again. This time he was using a melody of his own invention, as religious-like and sexy as he could manage it. Eames was not too bad of a singer, he just hardly ever practised this skill outside shower. A dream church on one of the worst jobs of his life seemed to be as good time to start as any.

Eames nodded at Yusuf. Now that Gajic was not trying to tear his hand back and was probably busy wondering what he was supposed to know of the Church of Love, the time felt right for bringing in the PASIV. Yusuf, as previously agreed, adopted the pose and manners of the highest ranking priest, bringing the silver suitcase in above his head like a sacred object. Pushing back another hysterical laughter, Eames synched his singing to match the importance of the moment, and saw Gajic’s eyes catching and recognising the PASIV. Narrowing. Peering at Yusuf. Checking the other “priests”, then his gun. Someone was shouting far outside – quite probably one of the many farmers gone bloodthirsty.

”We do this alone with Ti,” Radu said with a scowl.

Eames was still singing, _I need to work fast, before he gains any more consciousness._ He gestured at the Huang projection behind Gajic’s back to come closer. She obeyed but the glint of suspicion in her eyes was evident.

“The journey you are about to take will be pleasurable beyond anything ever known to man,” Eames sang and signalled to Cobb and Arthur to act immediately. Hoping desperately for the best, Eames finally let go of Gajic’s wrist and pressed him gently towards Huang. _If he’s not getting on that bed, this won’t work._

“I don’t think we should be —“ Gajic started, but Eames doubled up the volume of his made-up song and the complaint was lost underneath. Just when Gajic started to frown, his nostrils started to flare, just when Eames’ throat was going to clog up from all the singing — he could hear someone banging the church door —

The Huang projection slipped her arms around Gajic and pressed a palm on his crotch. Gajic exhaled sharply.

“Stop that. For godssakes, _Tina…”_

Huang chuckled, and Eames took the opportunity to press Gajic down on the bed. He landed between Huang’s legs.

“IV,” Eames mouthed, and Arthur and Cobb leaned in to inject. Both Gajic and Huang extended their arms idly, and Gajic’s face was getting red with embarrassment from the crotch contact. Eames wanted to applaud himself. _He’s distracted. He's buying it. Thank fucking fuck now we need to do this fast._

The team was on the ball, luckily, and everything was set in a matter of seconds. Now all they needed was to get in and back out before Yusuf would be sacrificed to the farmer horde trying to burst in.

Eames took his seat between Arthur and Minerva, pulled up his sleeve and found the vein.

Yusuf smiled at him feebly, forehead dripping with sweat. “Here we go again.”


	3. Dream level two (Nightclub/Minerva)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by [sonnss](http://http://sonnss.tumblr.com/).
> 
>  **WARNINGS for swearing and potentially offensive use of language.** Contains violence, blood, torture and illness, all happening in the heat of a job, seriously skip this one if you feel queasy easily, it gets pretty hardcore. Also references to OC/Eames in the past but Eames didn't like it, so don't you be discouraged either!

**III**

**Dream level two (Nightclub/Minerva)**

 

Arthur found himself standing next to the dance floor and knew he should have just walked in to find the others. He would have, had he not been in a mental state usually reserved for murder.

_I am the next dreamer and if I can’t calm down before we go under again…_

_Shit._ Nothing like this had ever happened to him. Arthur was, by default, _composed_. At worst, concerned or irritated. A man of action when action was needed but always delivering out of stone-cold rationality — whether it were punches, bullets or facts. Arthur was never, _ever_ out of order and definitely not in the middle of a job.

The corridor leading to the toilets was just a few steps away. Arthur found his way there, gratefully observed it to be empty and locked himself up in the nearest cubicle.

“Right.” He pressed his palms against the wall and rested his head between his arms. His hands were itching to punch a hole into something — ideally Eames — and the dulling feeling of fury was radiating from his brain so badly that in reality, Arthur would have overdosed on painkillers to survive.

Apparently, for some people every goddamn job was a game to play regardless of fact that the whole team had been blackmailed into it by a government that was refraining from detaining them only because it needed them for the job. If they screwed this up then MI6 would screw _them_ up — Arthur could not imagine being any angrier at Eames but if it was possible, then that would be the occasion.  Furthermore, the job was actually important. If Gajic continued with his deal with the Chinese, people would start dropping like flies. This was the one-time opportunity to cut the problem from its root before Western cities would start turning into zombielands.

Goddamned fucking nutjob of a forger.

The man had always been a little hazardous but last time, for the Fischer inception, he had at least sharpened up on the day of the job and performed fantastically regardless of his general behaviour. Now – Eames was acting like pushing Arthur’s buttons was the main event and extracting Gajic just an irritating sidenote. Why, Arthur could not even begin to guess. Eames had always taken perverse pleasure in trying to make Arthur mad, but the number of infantile quips was reaching obsessive levels.

Perhaps it had to do with whatever MI6 was blackmailing Eames with. Arthur hadn’t considered before that Eames could behave like a jerk to cover up his anxiety, but it seemed to be as good a reason as any. It wasn’t like Arthur had more believable theories. He had long since given up trying to figure out what sins he had committed that made Eames single him out over and over again.

It was _fine_ though. Arthur straightened himself up and took a deep breath. Regardless of who had put together the team, he was a professional.

 _That_ mattered. Whatever garbage came out of Eames’ mouth didn’t.

 _Having to play his boyfriend,_ Arthur told himself furiously, _equally unimportant. Every job has its downsides._

“It will all go well,” he said aloud and winced when he realised he was pretty much copying the words of Eames the farmer.

What a fucking show _that_ had been, too. Arthur had known Eames’ fashion statement of wearing bright red clogs was a bait for him but he had decided to put the team’s best interest in front and make Eames fix his act before anyone would notice. Then there was the improv as a priest of a made-up religion  _what the fuck was that by the way,_ and that bullshit about a farmer trying to go after Arthur, which Arthur didn’t believe for a second. The only one saving someone had been Arthur, when those projections had crept up from behind Eames. Arthur had heard them long before they had come into view. Eames could have heard them, too. But no. He was too busy being a complete asshole.

 _Although,_ Arthur’s brain reminded helpfully, _you were the one to ask about the smile._

With a sigh, Arthur pressed his forehead against the wall and considered smashing his skull in. He was _sure_ that his intention had been to tell Eames off for behaving like a kid, but somehow what had come out of his mouth had been a fucking question about that smile.

Arthur helping to put Eames under and watching him writhe and smile while looking flustered was both completely irrelevant to the Gajic job and uninteresting as hell so _why_ had he asked about it? Painfully aware that he was supposed to think calming thoughts, not ones that clogged veins and hindered breathing, Arthur tried to push the memory away. What was done, was done. _Eames isn’t the only one being unprofessional,_ his mind pointed out and that didn’t help. Arthur punched the wall and imagined how the next dream level would collapse like a Picasso painting.

_If we ever get out of here, I'll take a three-year vacation from any jobs with Eames._

If he didn’t get out soon, the others would regroup and he would have to explain where he had been. Worse, he could fail the whole job. It was unheard of and did not give great prospects for his career.

_For no reason at all._

“I can do this.”

Shaking his head, Arthur opened the cubicle door, stepped in front of the sinks and started washing his hands. They were shaking. _If the fucking boyfriend act was cut out, there would be no problem at all_. Arthur even considered briefly if he could convince Cobb to change the plan last minute but discarded the idea as too mortifying. There was just no way.

 _Think,_ he told himself and met his haunted gaze in the mirror, took in his perfectly slicked hair, black trousers and shirt, the invisible earpiece of his comm link. _Think,_ he thought again, and then it hit him.

Not exactly a solution but at least something to hold on to, something that could put Eames off balance and push him to behave. Arthur frowned at his mirror and concentrated hard. He was not a forger but even he knew the basics of how to alter appearance from the default provided by subconscious. They had practised it well enough for the priest scam, to make sure they were hillbilly enough for the village, and more was to follow at the hospital level.

_So I can just as well do it here._

The face in the mirror was the same but when Arthur looked down on himself, he saw tight sandwashed jeans where his trousers had been, a dark blue T-shirt with a naughty, low V-neck instead of his dress shirt, and when he touched his hair it was not slicked back any longer. It was shoulder length and tied behind his neck. Arthur brushed a finger on the skin just under his eye and saw his fingertip come back black. Just a touch of an eyeliner. His Glock was tucked under the waist of his jeans, covered from view by his shirt.

 _“Guys, I’m at the basement level,”_ Cobb said into the comm link just at that moment. _“Making my way up now.”_

Arthur gave his (still normal-looking) reflection a half-smile and observed that his heart rate was calming down. He knew exactly what he looked like, he had created every detail in his mind after all. It was ten kinds of different than his usual appearance, like a costume to wear – one that he was _sure_ would at least stagger Eames a bit.

_It’s all going to be fine._

_“I’m on the dance floor, it’s really crowded here,”_ Minerva said in Arthur’s ear and Arthur reached out to pull a few loose strands of hair to frame his face.

“I’m almost there, coming your way,” he then said into the comm link, pushed the rest of his anxiety into the pit of his belly and walked out.

“Where the hell were you, coming that way, the toilets?” Minerva demanded when Arthur found her. Then she registered Arthur’s choice of garment. Arthur watched her pale, heavily made-up face go from wide-eyed to impressed to suddenly furious. “What are you trying to pull?”

“No clue what you mean,” Arthur replied with a shrug.

 _“Guys, I’ve found and killed Huang’s projection, we should be clear for the forge now,”_ Cobb’s voice piped up in the comm link. _“Just need to find Gajic. Eames, you copy?”_

_"Copy. Already on my way upstairs."_

 

xx

The nightclub was a lot smaller than dream levels normally were. There was a definite danger about it — the maze having been replaced with a difficult-to-navigate but unquestionably small nightclub, there was no way to get away from Gajic’s ultra-militarised projections. However, Minerva was counting on other things to keep them safe: lack of light and amount of smoke. There was no place on the level that was properly lit, save the toilets (where Arthur should not have gone under any circumstances). The rooms were so full of smoke machines that if it was a real nightclub, health and safety authorities would have closed it down after a day.

As Arthur and Minerva made their way through the masses of scantily clad men and women, Arthur could not help thinking that Gajic was a whole lot different than he liked the dreamshare professionals to think. His reputation was that of a ruthless genius who did not save insults when he was unhappy with someone, only befriended people he considered useful, who held long grudges and made sure that anything he perceived as a wrongdoing towards his person would be repaid in one scar-inducing way or another.

The projections, dancing away feverishly, gave an image of a completely different kind of a person.

The women were dressed almost without exception in either latex, leather or see-through gowns much like the one Ti Huang’s projection had been wearing on the first level. The garments came in all colours, although primarily in shades of pink and red.

The men (much fewer in number than women) were more modest, probably reflecting some kind of chauvinistic mindset. Some were dressed in jeans and tight shirts, others in jeans without a shirt. Arthur even saw a couple that looked like dancers from a hip hop video. _How strange for a man of Gajic’s age._

Judging by the lingering touches and lips brushing skin, they were all in a very sexual state of mind, much more so than in a normal busy nightclub on a Saturday evening. In fact, an outsider that did not know the place would probably first have thought it was some kind of a fetish club. Militarisation was still present but to a lesser degree; instead of firearms, people were carrying knives, whips and tasers. Arthur took this as a positive sign, a likely consequence of the fact that Gajic had been put under willingly. The relaxed state of the projections also suggested that wherever Gajic was at that moment, he was not aware of being in a dream. That was another success, this time Yusuf’s, who had suggested they would dream up a special version of the compound to be given to the mark only. Something that would counter Gajic’s tendency to go lucid – make him even more likely to be unaware of dreaming as usual. 

Minerva touched Arthur’s arm and pointed across the room. “Gajic!” Then, into her comm: “I am with Arthur on the lower level bar, Gajic is having a drink here.”

Gajic was, indeed, leaning against the bar and sipping what looked like a Martini. He was wearing a tight red T-shirt that revealed the beginnings of a beer belly that he seemed to be harbouring, and, out of all garments, black leather pants.

 _“Minerva, keep an eye on him until I get there,”_ Cobb replied. “ _We need to get him to move upstairs. Arthur, meet up with Eames on the glass floor.”_

 

xx

After a hearty debate over the dream level plans, Minerva and Eames had decided that the glass enabling the kick would not be a dance floor but rather a ceiling to the actual dance floor. They were hoping that the projections would be more interested in occupying the other parts of the dreamscape, leaving the empty, attic-like top floor for the team to arrange their drama on.

Arthur climbed up the narrow, dark staircase leading upstairs. Glock in hand, he was expecting nothing short of an ambush waiting for him — it always paid off to be prepared — but apparently Minerva had succeeded in her plan. The glass floor was empty apart from the blue and green disco lights, at least as far as he could see in the lunch-quenching smoke. Tacky disco hits were playing on the background — older music than downstairs.

Ten or some steps further into the room, and Arthur was close enough to spot Eames-as-Huang standing in the middle of the room. He stopped on his tracks and forgot how to breathe.

In hindsight, Arthur should have checked what Eames’ design for Huang was going to be, to make sure he was mentally prepared. As it happened, he had been too busy with his own research to come up with such an idea. So there he stood then, with his brain spiralling into further dysfunction and his body refusing to remember what it was supposed to do next.

Eames-as-Huang was dressed in a dark pink latex skirt that was so short that her underwear would probably show if she as much as bowed her head – if she was wearing any, that was. She was short but very beautiful, thin legs covered in fishnet stockings.

The top part of the dress only covered a strip of stomach above the belly button. Following a Y shape, the latex then spread to cover Huang’s mid-size breasts like a tongue of a giant snake. Arthur could not see the backside but he suspected the strips reconnected behind Huang’s neck, leaving the back entirely naked apart from the long, straight hair that reached all the way down to her waist. Her skin was glistening with something that could have been oil or sweat.

For Gajic, that probably indeed looked like something extremely sexy. For Arthur, the word was more —  _intimidating._

As if all that had not been enough, Huang was wearing exactly the same stilettos that Eames had played around with in the previous dream.

After what felt like forever, Arthur forced himself to put one leg in front of another and make his way to the woman.

Eames-as-Huang turned and glued her almond-shaped eyes on Arthur before Arthur had managed to figure out how he was going to handle this. In the next instant, she had her body pressed against Arthur and her arms around Arthur’s neck.

“What are you doing, Eames?” Arthur whispered, going for an annoyed tone but it came out sounding like he was about to shit himself.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Eames-as-Huang hissed back.

“What do you mean?”

“You — you—“ the woman’s nails dug into Arthur’s biceps, “your hair is long.”

“I _know —“_

Eames-as-Huang pulled Arthur’s neck, hard, before Arthur could finish his sentence, and forced their lips together. Arthur’s mind screamed like a hyena at the fact that _she smelled exactly like Eames, his cologne, the scent of his clothes, fucking hell I will never live this through_ but Arthur’s body was apparently taking over the controls and answering the kiss. His body was heating up to match the _unbelievable burn_ of Eames’ skin. In paralysing terror, Arthur felt his eyes fall shut and his hands grab the woman by her naked waist, dampening his fingers in her sweat. When Eames-as-Huang ran her fingers across Arthur’s neck, down across his shoulders, all the way down to his sides, Arthur’s abused consciousness snapped awake. _What the hell am I doing,_ it screamed, and then: _the fucking bastard is playing a game again._

That was terrifyingly almost not enough to scare Arthur into his senses. But it did, and he pushed Eames away precisely as roughly as his now-wider figure allowed him. Eames staggered backwards on her heels.

“Can you explain what in the fuck’s name are you doing? Gajic is not here yet!”

Eames-as-Huang licked her lips slowly, and for a moment she looked like she was too lost to reply. The smirk returned then, unmistakably familiar even when planted on the face of a Chinese woman.

“Why, Arthur, we need to get into the role or otherwise it will be a very poor display of acting.”

“Fuck off.”

_“Arthur, Eames, are you in position? Gajic is moving upstairs, finally.”_

“All set,” Eames-as-Huang said with a tone that should only be used for phone sex, then broke up in a coughing fit, probably to mask laughter. The fucker. “Arthur, ah, Arthur is all excited.”

Arthur could hear Cobb snorting. _“Focus, Eames.”_

“We are both extremely focused here.”

“Can you stop making assessments of me?” Finally, Arthur just couldn’t bite back a comment. Speaking outside the comm, he continued with a tone that he hoped signalled how much he _hated_ what had just taken place. “Is this a game for you? The job is bad enough as is and you act like you’re in an actual fucking disco with someone that gives a shit. One more jerk move like that and we probably won’t make it out alive.”

Eames’ smirk disappeared. “Oh, Arthur, I _know_ I am not going to make it out alive.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Cobb and Yusuf tested the compound, it’s safe. Is this something I don’t know? If you’ve seen weakness in the plan, you should have talked about it before we actually got here, and before —“ Arthur saw the all-too-familiar figure emerging from the smoke. “Shit, Gajic’s already here.”

“That was fast,” Eames-as-Huang said and stepped in to wrap her arms around Arthur again. Once again Arthur wondered how every inch of her skin was so hot. Almost unnaturally hot. Her eyes were slightly glazed over.

 _I think the boyfriend design actually worked._ Somehow, it didn’t feel like a victory.

“Now, Arthur, if you would give me a kiss.”

Had it not been for that _damned smell,_ Arthur could have been able to pretend that it was not Eames at all – that he was kissing some random woman in a nightclub. Even that would not have been Arthur’s style; he hardly ever went to nightclubs and even on the rare times he did, he never picked up random people. In fact he passionately disliked the whole superficial meat market thing. But still, it would have been at least a digestible scenario. Something he could have worked with; forget Eames and imagine yourself in a club with some eager girl attaching her lips to yours.

But for some cursed reason Eames had not extended his forgery to the smell even though he well could have. From a professional viewpoint this could have been seen as a mistake; Arthur was tempted to believe that it was the opposite. More precisely, it was another attempt of Eames’ to wind him up. And wind him up it did.

Arthur closed his eyes instinctively when their lips met and this time he went for it for real. The last thing he wanted to do, despite everything, was to give Eames a reason to tell him he didn’t play his part well. If he could make Eames taste at least some of his own medicine in the process – he had seemed surprised enough about Arthur’s outfit – all the better. _It won’t last long,_ he told himself. _I’m just going to have to bear._

But every minute felt like an eternity.

Arthur pushed his tongue into Eames-as-Huang’s mouth, grabbed the woman’s chin to tilt it to the side and pressed another hand on the small of her back to pull her closer. Eames moaned but the music pumped too loud for Arthur to hear anything, all he felt was a vibration against his lips, and then Eames was kissing him back like there was no tomorrow. _Holy fucking mother of god,_ Arthur thought when he felt the aggression of it, _Gajic won’t notice whether we are biting each other’s lips or not,_ at that Eames bit again, _oh god,_ and Arthur realised with a heated kind of panic that his body was starting to respond. He was getting _hard_ and Huang’s leg was of course where else but pressed against his crotch, inevitably registering what was happening. Eames actually _rubbed_ Huang’s body against Arthur in response and that was too much for Arthur not to moan right into Eames’ mouth. They pulled apart for air, foreheads pressed together, panting into each other’s mouths. 

“What in the everlasting hell —“ Arthur began, his mission completely forgotten and smell of Eames in his nose thicker than the smoke, and suddenly something hard connected with the side of his face. Next thing Arthur registered was that he was flying through the air. It took him quite an effort to turn onto his stomach mid-flight so that when he touched down on the floor, he was able to roll around, stand up, turn around and face — Gajic — who was pointing two pistols at his face.

“You are so dead,” Gajic growled. “So fucking done for.” Arthur reached for his gun, found nothing and realised Gajic’s left hand weapon was in fact his Glock.

“Radu, baby, don’t,” Eames-as-Huang said, picking up her accent and way of talking. “It was a mistake.”

“Shut up, you cunt. I’ll deal with you later.”

“You don’t understand! It’s not what it looks like. He knows about what you’re doing with the government, I was trying to —“

Gajic glanced at Huang briefly upon hearing that; Arthur used this as an opportunity to shoot a daredevil roundhouse kick across Gajic’s arms. One gun flew off his hand and Arthur grabbed the wrist of the one holding the other. Gajic was physically stronger than Arthur; as soon as he started resisting, Arthur was in trouble. Eames wrapped her tiny woman’s hands around Arthur’s to help.

“Don’t kill him, Radu, he’s the only one that knows the contact inside the government.”

“I don’t believe a word and I don’t give a fuck what he knows, you have been fucking him, I can smell your cunt on him. He is going to die. Now.”

Eames went along with this new claim without missing a beat:

“I only did it for your sake. He knows who is trying to get you —“

“Nobody is trying to get me!” Gajic let go of the gun suddenly and produced a knife out of somewhere. It sliced Arthur straight in the stomach and if he had not pulled backwards just in time, the cut would have been worse than just a surface wound.

Arthur and Eames shared a wide-eyed glance. Gajic had _not_ been holding a knife before. Apparently it was possible and worse, _natural,_ for him to conjure up objects in the middle of a fight even when he was not conscious of dreaming.

Eames decided it was time for the main act.

“If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask your team to help?”

“What team?” Although Gajic was not looking at Huang as he was too busy trying to stab Arthur, the way he frowned made Arthur hope he was concerned with what she was saying.

“You don’t remember?” Eames-as-Huang asked emphatically. ”The team you came in here with. Your colleagues, what was his name, Cobb, and those. We arrived all together before I lost you.”

Even when Arthur was fully occupied in blocking kicks and dodging knife stabs, he couldn’t help appreciating the genius of Eames. Suggest a mark something unexpected like that he’s on a dreamshare mission and when he gets suspicious, immediately divert his attention into something emotion-provoking like a cheating girlfriend so that he'll stop questioning the story he was just fed. An unconscious dreamer has such a short memory span. Even Gajic, in all his capability.

“You didn’t _lose_ me, you whore. You fucking cheated on me.”

“To save you! He knows who betrayed you, Radu. The government is planning your execution.”

That was enough to stop Gajic from trying to pierce Arthur’s skin, but not enough to make him put his knife away. He frowned at Huang. “They cannot execute me. I am too valuable.”

“It’s not what he said.” Eames pointed at Arthur. “He knows them.”

The story was almost taking but not quite. Realising he should have done it ages ago, Arthur collected his wits and joined the game. “Who the hell are you? What the fuck is this about?”

“You were fucking my whore of a girlfriend, that’s what this is about,” Gajic growled. He dropped the knife all of a sudden and grabbed Arthur by his collar. Arthur could have dodged, by then he had learned Gajic’s best moves and found that he was much faster than the other man, but his instinct told him that if Gajic wanted to “just” shake him, things were going the right way.

Arthur considered revising this assessment when Gajic shook him so violently that the V neck of his shirt ripped further down, almost all the way down to the belly button.

“You’ve been fucking my girlfriend. The only reason I would ever let you live is if you tell me something valuable, you understand?”

“Man, I have no idea what you mean.”

“He does,” Eames piped in. “He just told me.”

“Shut up!” Gajic snapped and promptly kneed Arthur in his guts. “Start talking, asshole.”

Arthur took this opportunity to switch gears. Bent over in pain, he lifted his head to sneer at Gajic. “You’re going to die. They’re coming for you.”

“Who is?”

“The Chinese.”

“Fuck you.”

 _“Now,”_ Eames-as-Huang hissed into his comm link, and broke into a fit of coughs. Arthur glanced at the tiny female figure, currently holding her stomach with both hands. _What’s this cough?_

Cobb and Minerva ran into view. As per the plan, Cobb was carrying the PASIV suitcase. “Gajic, we’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Cobb said. “Where’d you go?”

“Explain me,” Gajic shouted and yanked Arthur in front of Cobb, “who the hell is this man?”

“Never met him in my life,” Cobb said. “Why? Who is he then?”

“Someone who fucking claims the Chinese government has put a bounty on my head,” Gajic said. Eames-as-Huang glanced at Arthur from where she was leaning against her knees, and Arthur knew they were thinking of the same thing. The bounty was unscripted, just like the claim that Huang had already had sex with Arthur. It was the second proof that Gajic was buying the story – he was tweaking it to make it more credible for himself. Now all they needed to do was to play along.

“Bounty?” Minerva repeated stupidly, and Arthur resisted the urge to kick her in the face.

“Three million dollars,” Eames-as-Huang supplied immediately, and Cobb whistled.

“Right,” he said. “I can think of quite a few hitmen who would seize that opportunity. Do we know who is orchestrating this headhunt?”

“He knows,” Eames-as-Huang said.

“Shut up!” Gajic said but his eyes were on Cobb’s PASIV. “Let’s take him under, I want to know if it’s true or not and I don’t trust a word he says awake.”

“Sure,” Cobb agreed easily and knelt down on the floor. “Minerva can stay back and make sure we can sleep uninterrupted. Lay the man on the floor.”

Arthur let Gajic push him on the floor. He hit his head on the glass and turned on his side to peer the dance floor far below him. Most of the projections were still dancing away, only a few were standing still and looking around suspiciously — so with any luck they were able to get things done before violence got out of hand.

“I am coming too,” Eames-as-Huang said.

“The fuck you are,” Gajic said.

“Think,” Eames-as-Huang replied. “Who do you think he’s gonna talk to, you? I can get it out of him much better.”

“Are you a friend of this guy?” Cobb asked Eames-as-Huang, another pre-scripted line.

“Apparently they have been fucking behind my back,” Gajic growled.

“Sorry to hear that. For what it's worth though, I think she could be useful,” Cobb suggested. “He may be more inclined to speak to someone he’s had sex with.”

“What a fucking twisted idea.” But Gajic leaned in to yank Huang to him by her bicep. “Sit down, bitch, and extend your arm.”

Eames-as-Huang made a nice impression of being nervous yet willing to help Gajic out of guilt. She dropped on her knees side-by-side with Arthur, who happened to look her in the eyes and that was when he realised something was out of place.

The cough wasn’t just some cover-up performance. Eames-as-Huang looked _sick._ The glassy eyes, hot skin, sweat and coughing fits suddenly made sense. She was making a good job hiding the problem but it was clear for Arthur now that he was close enough to see her eyes without being snogged into oblivion. She was breathing far too fast even for someone who had just been caught red-handed cheating on her boyfriend.

“Does it hurt?” she asked Cobb who shook his head.    

“Put them under already,” Gajic snapped. “I want them to go first, so we can agree on a plan.”

“Shouldn’t I stay back and listen to the plan so I’ll know?” Eames-as-Huang asked and lifted her head up. Arthur felt her forearm pressing against his. He thought she was speaking faster, like people with high fever often did. “I mean, if I am going to be the one getting the name out of him.”

“You’ll only do as I tell you,” Gajic replied. “Lie the fuck down.” He pressed Huang’s head back against the glass with his foot.

Minerva and Cobb knelt down to help with the IVs, and Arthur closed his eyes. Eames’ skin was so hot against his arm, the smell of him so heady on his nose and a completely new kind of worry clenching his guts.

_If it was just a cold, he would not have bothered hiding it._


	4. Dream level three (Hospital/Arthur)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by [sonnss](http://sonnss.tumblr.com).
> 
>  **WARNINGS for swearing, potentially offensive use of language and for this chapter in particular, extreme violence, extreme torture and graphic descriptions of illness.** References to OC/Eames in the past but Eames didn't like it, so don't you be discouraged either! Also, some shameless pseudo science :)

**IV**

**Dream level three (Arthur/Hospital)**

 

It was pitch-black where Eames opened his eyes and for one, dreadful moment he thought he was not in the dream he was supposed to be — that they had somehow fallen into limbo or worse — but after staggering forward a few steps he felt a concrete wall beneath his hands and realised he was in the underground tunnels below the hospital.

 _Shit._ He tried to recall what Minerva had said about the tunnels. Eames remembered her mentioning that there was a way up somewhere, but only she and Arthur would know where. Eames was quite positive she had never mentioned the possibility that anyone would wake up in the tunnels. It was random, far out. They were only there to be exploded for the kick.

The first gut-clenching flash of fear passed through Eames when he felt up the wall and happened to touch a pack of dynamite attached to it. _I have to find the way out of here, now._ His body decided to throw a coughing fit at that. _Why do these tunnels need to be dark like bloody sewers?_

Aware of the clock ticking, Eames started running, both hands still feeling the walls for the exit or any help. _There’s got to be something. If I just move fast enough, I can find it and get out on time._ Every fibre of his over-exhausted body was sending emergency signals for having to move so fast and every breath threatened to break into a raspy coughing fit but Eames gritted his teeth together and kept on going. If he’d stop to rest, his body would be gone anyway.

Even through the layers of the dream, he could sense how bad he was topside. What came out as a coughing fit in the dream was probably, in reality, a throat clogged so badly that barely any air got in at all. The splitting headache that Eames mercifully did not feel in the dream must have been the cause of all that fatigue he did feel, just like his constant sweating and burning skin were signs of his high fever. Eames had read the list of symptoms so many times that he knew it all by heart; the only thing still missing were the hallucinations.

His own laborious panting prevented him from hearing the footsteps approaching from the opposite direction. It took Eames a split-second to realise he had just crashed against someone, run on them hard, and then his nose caught the scent of expensive cologne and obsessive usage of soap —  

Arthur.

“How much time do you have left?” the man hissed and pinned Eames against the tunnel wall. His voice was low and uneven with fury.

“Arthur,” Eames drawled. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Quit the crap.”

“I am genuinely charmed by your presence, love,” Eames said, “seeing that you are one of the two people who know the way out of here.”

Arthur yanked him and smashed against the wall again. The back of Eames’ head hit the concrete and Arthur unwittingly pressed his body against the other man. _Oh, this damn smell._

“We shouldn’t have ended up down here. I don’t know why we did, but that’s the least of my worries right now. Based on the time difference between levels and how long it will take for them to plan and go under we have half an hour, give or take ten minutes, before the others enter the dream. It’s too late to explain this mess to Cobb before we have to finish the job but you are damn sure going to explain it to _me._ You are ill. How much time do you have?”

 _So he had figured it out._ Eames cursed his lack of self-restraint. He should have put on more effort and hidden at least the sweat. _Useless forgery._

“Ill?” He tried to sound confused.

“Yes. Ill. You have Gajic’s super-disease. Now, for the final time or I’ll dislocate your shoulder: how much time do you have?” Arthur pressed his arm across Eames’ throat, and Eames sighed.

“I don’t really know. If I was awake, I’d be unconscious, so I guess the dream is keeping me functional for now. I did not expect to make it this far this well to be honest.”

“And it did not occur to you to let us know about this problem?”

“Didn’t want to cause unnecessary upset. As you can see darling, it did make you upset.”

Arthur leaned in and his elbow sunk further against Eames’ windpipe. Eames felt another coughing fit coming. “If you are worried for your safety, there is no need,” he told Arthur “I — I made sure I am not touching any of you topside. Obviously down here you won’t catch it from me. _”_

“Why?” Arthur pressed. “Did MI6 do this to you?”

“Indeed they did. They, ah,” Eames had to turn his head away so that he would not cough at Arthur’s face. Arthur let him go, and Eames' knees nearly buckled at the force with which his lungs contracted. His saliva tasted like blood.

When it eased off and Eames was again able to register the world beyond his illness, he realised Arthur was holding him upright by the hips, another hand solid on his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t have run.”

Eames wanted to retort with something clever, but nothing came to mind beyond wiping his mouth and trying to stand upright.

“They did it to make sure you’d complete the job, that you’d do it properly,” Arthur continued. “That’s why you are not the dreamer of any level, so that the illness would not cause complications. And that’s why pretending a sick woman is your final level forgery.”

“Suited the plan.” There was no point in denying it any longer, really. Eames was becoming aware that the job was crashing down on him. He had only prepared for a short walk along the hospital corridors, collapsing on the bed and then just concentrating on staying awake and playing his part — not sprinting around in underground tunnels. As much as Eames would have wanted to go back to mulling over the thought of how Arthur tasted like when they kissed on the dance floor or the mind-shattering excitement he had felt when he had discovered Arthur getting turned on, that train had already passed. Unless Arthur agreed to help him, he should just sit down and try to save some energy for writing down his will — for the unlikely case he’d have a conscious minute topside.

As if all this wasn’t enough, Eames felt cold fingers curling against his neck. He spun around and punched the air. Arthur, on the other side, stepped forward and touched him.

“What is it?”

 _Shit. It’s starting._ “Nothing.”

“Right.” Arthur exhaled; Eames felt it against his face just as another brush of cold fingers on his neck made him shiver.

“Look, Arthur. You know the way up. I — I can still forge. We can still do this.”

“I doubt it.”

“What other choices we have? We’ve still got time before I lose all functionality. Let’s move.”

After a pregnant pause, Arthur grabbed Eames by the arm. Eames’ eyes slid shut at the feeling of Arthur’s palm against his skin and, as if to remind him of the reality, the ghost hand scraped nails down his neck at the very same moment.

“This way. It’s not far,” Arthur said.

“Perfect.”

The rest of the journey passed in uncomfortable silence. Eames had to stop and bend over twice to cough, and second time he almost retched. Unsure if vomiting in a dream would even be possible and what would follow, he forced back the nausea and tried to swat away the cold hands running along his back. Once, when he looked above his shoulder, he saw a glimpse of something dark moving behind him and promptly decided never to look again. The depth of the dream was protecting him, he was sure of it; the cold, eerie feeling of the touches was familiar to him from his normal nightmares (back in the day when he still had natural dreams) but the gropey representation was not. _I can handle it,_ Eames thought. _If it stays like this, I can handle it._

Arthur stopped them in the darkness and fumbled for something that sounded like a metallic lock. 

“Here, hold this.” Arthur pressed a flashlight in Eames' hand. Eames switched it on and saw that they were standing in front of a small metallic door. Next to it was an opened box where the flashlight must have come from. Arthur was kneeling down and leaning back to shed light on a metallic keypad next to the door. Eames watched him punch in the digits.

“Step inside,” Arthur said. “Let’s lock this in case any projections try to get in.”

Behind the door there was only a narrow space and a ladder leading straight upwards. After both of them had squeezed in, Arthur had to press a palm on the wall next to Eames’ head to prevent the rest of his body from pressing against him. Eames had to hold back another nervous coughing fit. Despite his state, he was painfully aware of Arthur’s warmth, the worried frown on his forehead, the slight and terribly attractive downwards curl of the corner of his lip.

Arthur’s mind, of course, was running on completely different rails as he fixed a stern gaze on Eames in the dim light. Eames wanted to smirk and say something witty but the cold hand crept around his throat and _squeezed._ It took all Eames’ effort not to scream. He was losing hope on ever getting away alive and all he would have wanted was to watch Arthur go all flustered and angry over him just one more time.

He had no strength left to make such happen so he just stared at Arthur, feverish sweat running over his face like tears. _I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to wake and see what this fucking thing does to me in real life._ It was like rabies, Ryan Woodhouse had said on that nightmarish journey from LA to London where the assholes had first contaminated him and then proceeded to educate on the disease. It destroys your mind before it destroys your body. At the last stage of the illness, you’ll miss the times when you were only choking on your own saliva.

“You need to get me to the hospital before — before the others arrive,” he told Arthur. “As soon as I’m in the bed, you — you—” Eames turned away from Arthur’s face and ended up coughing against Arthur’s shoulder. _God how I wish it wasn’t like this. If I could touch him and it wasn’t like this._  
  
“As soon as you are in bed, I need to find Huang’s projection and bring her in, ideally at the same time Cobb brings in Gajic. Yeah, I know.”  
  
When Eames risked a glance, Arthur looked away and frowned but not in an angry way. He looked pained, somehow, and his eyes were wide and dark. Eames’ guts drenched in the stupid, unrealistic hope that even the smallest bit of it would be something even vaguely akin to affection. Care. At least not wanting Eames dead. _The last wish of a dying man._

“We’ll get it out of him, the cure,” Arthur said quietly. “You’ll be fine. Now climb up.”

 

xx

As soon as Eames was tucked into his bed and Arthur gone after Huang, Gajic crashed through the doors. Sooner than anticipated and spot-on where he needed to be without anyone guiding him there, probably subconsciously chasing the disturbance in the dream. Eames had only a split second to change himself into Gajic’s wife.

Gajic had been given the mark’s compound again, meaning that he should not be able to spontaneously remember the previous level. However, Gajic being Gajic, nothing was ever certain.

“Sandra!” Gajic gasped as soon as he saw who was on the bed and Eames dared a small exhale of relief.

“Radu, help me.” Eames twisted Sandra’s body into an angle he knew would look gross and let a coughing fit take over.

“What’s wrong?”

“You thought—“ Eames-as-Sandra wheezed, turned the other way, “they wouldn’t use it against you?”

Gajic who had been on his way to the bed froze and stepped back. “Are you contaminated?”

“Yes. God, my love, I am so scared.”

“No. Sandra!”

Eames-as-Sandra made a face of desperation but when she turned to look at Gajic, the man’s face had changed. It was not Gajic any longer standing in the room but _Eames_ , and all the lights had gone out apart from the green exit sign. The other Eames’ skin was blue and full of black veins, its eyes glassy like those of a dead person and it was smiling with one side of its face, the other was drooping down. _Those fingers._

 _It’s just a hallucination,_ Eames thought, her frail woman's body attempting to shiver. _It’s actually Gajic standing there. Fuck. What do I do now?_

Then Gajic’s voice echoed through: “Why aren’t there any nurses in your room?”

Eames’ shook her head and her vision returned. She could have cried out of relief. _Never again, please, please._ Gajic was looking around suspiciously.

“They wanted to give us some privacy,” Eames improvised. “They can’t help me, Radu. You can. Only you know the cure.”

“How do you know about all this?”

A projection nurse walked in just then and joined Gajic in the act of suspicious glaring. Eames felt her vision blurring again, a hand grabbing her ankle, so she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Please…”

“You are not supposed to know about any of this.” Gajic's voice dropped in the way Eames knew from the past to be the moment before he made the call to kill someone. She knew she should invent something, a story that Gajic would believe and adapt just like on the previous levels but she could not even open her eyes, let alone think of something clever. _Where in the bloody hell is Cobb when you need him?_

“Please help me, please.”

“You are not supposed to know.”

“I — I don’t know what you mean —“ Eames forced her eyes back open and blinked away the fake tears. Although for a moment she saw again that sick figure of the undead Eames, it morphed back into Gajic, the room came into view and Eames watched the Serbian man’s hand moving slowly to his hipline where a _gun appeared out of thin air, this is it, he’s going to shoot me, it’s over —_

“You asshole!” Huang screamed and kicked the door open. A doctor wearing a surgical mask came into the room after her and it was _Arthur, thank fuck, thank fucking fuck I am not alone here any longer,_ “you said you’d leave her for me in the end, you _promised_ she means nothing —“

 _“Ti?”_ Gajic forgot his gun for the moment. Eames forced the words out, aiming for a jealous tone the best she could:

“Who is this woman?”

“She’s — she’s — “ Gajic was still staring at Huang, looking caught, and Eames took the opportunity to lock eyes with Arthur. His face was mirroring Eames’ thoughts: _where is Cobb?_

“Stay away from my man, bitch,” the projection Huang shouted at Eames-as-Sandra, who lifted her trembling hand to flash her ring.

“I’m his wife. And I am going to be dead in a few — a few — hours.” As if to remind, something slimy and cold brushed against her skin, and Eames didn’t have to fake the whimper.

“Fuck you and your joke of a marriage!” Huang raved, far more out of control and foul-mouthed than the real Huang would ever have been. Eames had expected this, of course, it had been the purpose of the Arthur-Huang encounter after all: Gajic’s pre-set anger towards Huang coupled with Eames-as-Sandra’s planned acceptance of this secret lover was believed to awaken Gajic’s guilt and turn tables so that he would want to save his wife.

“Actually, fuck the both of you — you fucking spoon-fed show mare with designer bags, smelly underwear and no fucking idea what your husband wants! And fuck you,” she turned to fume at Gajic, “you lying sack of shit! You told me you’d find a way to get her out of the picture and here you are, grovelling at her feet. She’s sick, let her die! Let her die, Radu, and that’ll solve fucking everything!”

Unfortunately, carrying out the plan would have needed a lot more active participation from Eames who was desperately occupied with keeping her eyes open and her lungs functional. Twice she attempted to talk but both times, fingers around her windpipe stopped her. It was like living a horror movie. The moment lasted for too long, Gajic remembered his gun again and pointed it at Huang.

“Know your place, cunt.”

“Excuse me, Mr Gajic, what are you —“ Arthur was trying to step in while Eames-as-Sandra screamed as loud as possible for distraction, but it was too late. Gajic shot Huang straight in the head, effectively removing the best leverage they had to carry out the extraction.

“Nurse!” Arthur shouted. He and the projection nurse kneeled down to check Huang’s vitals. _He’s trying to buy us time,_ Eames realised.

Eames risked a glance at Gajic who was staring at his gun, panting, and — the room was dark again and Eames’ own body was lying on top of Sandra’s woman’s body. _Not again, fuck!_ The weight was crushing. Eames felt ice-cold teeth scraping against her neck, _this is so fucking twisted,_ the whole room was dark blue and hostile, Gajic was panting somewhere and the Eames on top of him was not Eames, it was Death and it had always been waiting for him, to catch him for the lies, to make him pay, to tell him what he always thought of himself — that he was a worthless piece of shit — Eames knew he had lost the forge and fumbled for the blankets with the only free hand he had. Unsure if he had managed to pull them over himself or not, he turned to lie face down and hoped that Gajic was doing something other than looking at him —

“Mr Gajic!” Arthur’s scream pierced through the air. “Put down the gun!”

Death stilled where it was just digging in for a bite and then it was gone. Eames saw Arthur whose wide eyes were on Gajic’s gun and he had no doubt about what had just happened. Arthur had stepped in because he had seen Eames losing the forge.

Eames forced Sandra’s body back. For one, frightening moment Gajic had his gaze nailed on Arthur — the seconds stretched — but then Eames grabbed a bowl from the table and gagged out a vomit of blood. Gajic lost his concentration.

“Sandra?”

“I — cannot—“ Eames retched.

“Mr Gajic, we need the cure,” Arthur cut in, and the projection nurse rushed to check Eames-as-Sandra’s vitals. “Quickly, before it is too late.”

Gajic stepped over the pool of blood spreading under Huang’s body to make his way to Sandra, then seemed to remember she was contagious and stopped on his tracks. “Okay, okay. Look, love, you’ll be fine.” He waved at Arthur. “Doctor, it’s very simple. You just need to combine a few ingredients. Go and get —“

“Gajic,” Minerva’s voice cut through the sentence. Eames pushed the bowl back on the table, trying to get a hang of what was going on. _Minerva was the dreamer of the previous level._ She could not be there. Unless for whatever fucking reason _Cobb_ had been the actual dreamer of the previous level, which would also explain his absence but that made no sense, Cobb was the extractor _—_

“Brennan?” Gajic frowned. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You are under, three levels down believe it or not. This is an extraction job and that woman lying in the bed is not your wife Sandra. It’s Eames who set all this up. They’re trying to get you to explain the cure, and I would not do that if I were you.”

_“What?”_

“Yes, and —“

Arthur shot the projection nurse dead and dove for Gajic just as the man lifted his gun. They rolled over and broke into a fist fight right on the pool of Huang’s blood. Eames dropped his forgery on purpose this time, collected all the strength he had left and pounced from the bed. For a moment he was sure he’d faint from the effort, but somehow he managed to use his weight to tackle Minerva on the floor and straddle her.

“Who bought you?” Eames asked. The walls outside the room were shaking with some external force, probably Cobb wreaking havoc one level up. Eames wondered briefly what lies she had told him.

“Nobody,” Minerva hissed. “I am just sick of your shit, Eames. You thought I’d never find out it was you? _Well I did._ You fucking bastard.”

If Eames had possessed the strength, he would have laughed at what was probably the biggest miscalculation of his life. He should have picked Ariadne as the architect, Cobb’s whinery aside, he should have listened to his instinct and not his mind that was telling him that a grumpy Cobb was a careless side-step away from a mad Cobb and that there was no chance in hell that Minerva would ever have found out about the little trick Eames had played on her.

It was such an old thing, even. Seven years back Eames had been on a job with her. Impressed by her exceptional talent as an architect, he had ended up sleeping with her a few times. During the idle hours spent in bed she had revealed that she was about to retire from the dreamshare because she had an inheritance coming. A ridiculously rich aunt that had cut off ties with her children had gone and chosen to dedicate all of her possessions to Minerva. Minerva had learned about this only a few weeks before the job with Eames and had already been plotting her aunt’s murder to get her hands on the money sooner.

Eames had found the whole story appalling although he had naturally played fascinated and wished Minerva good luck. After the job he had ignored Minerva’s messages to come out for a date and watched from a distance when her aunt had suffered a sudden brain haemorrhage.  Thanks to the good few weeks of heads up during which he’d had the time to investigate the way Minerva handled her funds, it had taken him literally no time to empty her account by pretending to be her personal assistant.

An unsuspicious fortnight or so after that he had answered Minerva’s text and taken her out for a dinner in a perfect pretence of a completely oblivious, careless, slightly out-of-focus Eames. Minerva had not mentioned her aunt or money that time around at all and they had ended up having sex again, but the tinge of rage was like a stain in her every movement.

Knowing Minerva was not stupid, Eames had taken very good care to cover his tracks. He had even gone as far as to check that at least three dozen other people knew of the inheritance and arranged himself a solid alibi for three days before, during and after Minerva’s money disappeared.

And that had all taken place _seven_ years ago. Seven years and four more jobs together (as it happened, Minerva’s retirement plans had been cancelled), and the woman had never given the slightest indication that she had found out. They had stopped having sex as soon as Eames had been sure that she was not suspicious. He had lost his appetite for her over the whole killing your own aunt thing.

So. The only plausible explanation was that she had somehow spent seven years tracking down the others who had known about the inheritance and had managed to close out all of them — except for Eames.

That this had happened just before the worst fuckover of Eames’ life was so far-fetched that if Eames believed in such things, he might have called it fate.

But he didn’t call it fate. Instead, he elbowed Minerva straight into the face and smashed her skull against the floor. A glance over his shoulder proved that Arthur was still full-on fighting Gajic, and although Arthur had gained some practice on the previous level, Gajic was so raged up that it was only a question of time when he would start conjuring up firearms and win the fight. Judging by the way Arthur was moving he had already been either kicked or slashed across his left leg. The dream level seemed to be shaking from all of Arthur’s efforts; Eames could hear strange banging coming from outside the room. That normally never, ever happened — Arthur was a stable dreamer — so Eames could only guess how tough a time he was having.

Minerva hissed out swearwords and tried to kick Eames in the groin. Eames head-butted her skull back on the floor, and that was when she finally passed out.

Eames rolled onto his side and tried to get up but his body could not cope with the effort. Helplessly, he spat blood and coughed and looked at Arthur throwing off guns, twisting off knife after knife, kicking Gajic for all he was worth, and again and again the man got up, conjured up another weapon and came back.

Arthur spared Eames a quick glance with his next dodge and side-stepped enough to kick one of Gajic’s discarded guns towards Eames. Eames caught it from where he was lying down, took aim and — Gajic was quicker. He jumped through the air and landed on Eames’ arm before Eames could shoot.

The crushing pain on his arm alone he could have coped with, but at the very same moment he felt fingers _inside his windpipe,_ crawling up towards the throat, and let out a sound that was as much a scream as a retch. His fingers fell loose around the gun and Gajic pressed a knee against his chest, forcing a burst of saliva and blood out of his mouth. The finger was tickling his throat and Eames inhaled like it was his last breath.

Anticipating Arthur’s next attack, Gajic conjured up yet another handgun — a Beretta with a silencer, of all things — and shot Arthur straight in the left knee just as he had been about to grab a gun from the floor.

Arthur did not make a sound but he dropped down on his hands and right leg, breath harsh. Eames felt his eyes starting to water.

 _Fuck, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you in. I am so sorry, darling._                                                                        

The clock on the wall was showing 38 minutes until the kick. With Arthur that badly injured, they had no hope.

_This is really it._

Once Gajic had decided Arthur was not a threat any longer, he lifted his weight enough to allow Eames to speak. “Three levels down, you say? Who made the compound?” 

“A— a ch—“ Gajic had morphed into Eames the Death again, looking down and tilting its head in that unreadable, evil way.

“A what?”

“A chemist… A chemist I’ve used a few times. You don’t know him.”

“I will, after this.” Death wrapped his ice-cold fingers around Eames’ throat and morphed back to Gajic whose half-grin made Eames realise that Yusuf must have been a part of the plot. Yusuf had dreamed up the PASIV on the first level and would therefore have known who got the dreamer’s compound for the second level. He was the only one who could have been bought to stick it into Cobb rather than Minerva.

 _I picked a team of traitors,_ Eames thought and Gajic slapped him across the face. Somehow, using just one leg, Arthur pounced from where he had been lying to grab hold of Gajic and roll back on the floor with him. Eames saw him trying to hold Gajic in place with his healthy leg and what looked like the beginnings of a stranglehold, but Gajic managed to kick Arthur straight into his destroyed knee. Arthur rolled onto his side and judging by the contorted look on his face, Eames had no clue how he managed not to be screaming of pain.

“Arthur,” he shouted with all his effort. “We’ve already failed so there’s no point in you staying here to be tortured. Go and find the detonator —“ Eames’ voice was cut off by Gajic kicking him across the face. Eames’ slid a couple of feet on the floor from the force and a coughing fit took over.

“You’ve got it for real,” Gajic noted all of a sudden, satisfaction in his voice. “You’ve been contaminated with my baby. Looking at the way you are here, I’d guess you will have less than half an hour to live once you wake up. _If_ you wake up. Maybe I’ll wake you up. What I am going to do to you here will have no match for what will happen to you topside.”

Arthur was once again rolling to his knees, his shoulders shaking from the effort, head bent and sweat glistening on his neck. He was gathering energy to — Eames had no doubt about it — to attack Gajic again, rather than to run. He was not the type to give up.

Gajic took this moment to shoot Eames in the left kneecap in the perfect imitation of what he had done to Arthur.

It was more pain than his mutilated body would ever have been able to take in real life. Yet, somehow, even worse was his growing understanding that he would be dead, _actually dead,_ very, very soon — that he would never enjoy a sirloin steak again, that he would never manage to prevent Gajic from starting a goddamned world war, that he would never find out if Arthur had been turned on by him or Huang’s body and that he would never discover why Arthur had smiled at him like that in the second level of the inception job. So he held on to the only warmth he had —

— the knowledge that Arthur was staying with him until one of them would be dead.

Eames felt Gajic’s foot connecting with his cramping stomach once, twice, three times and then he lost count. He felt his body turning from the force of the kick, felt the lack of blood and the fireworks of pain blurring his consciousness and fought against it tooth and nail, Eames the Death was not Gajic any longer. No, Death was real and it was crawling towards Eames on all fours, reaching for his face to press his cold palm against it, block his breathing and _that would be it,_ topside or under, no matter, because Death _was_ coming for Eames and whatever nightmares his body was having topside were just representations of the cold truth which was facing him right there in the dim green light — that he was a failure, his tricks only worked for so long, that his past had finally caught up with him, that his own country did not think him worth saving, and he would never, _ever_ be good enough for someone like Arthur  —

Eames heard an ear-shattering _bang_ coming from the other side of the room.

Then, footsteps, at least three or four people, Gajic made a surprised grunt and said, “who the hell are you?” and then something metallic fell on the floor. _The gun?_

“You stay the fuck away from him,” someone said, a man Eames did not recognise, “and you’re going to explain us how to make the cure, now.”

“Are you fucking projections?” Gajic hissed, and at that Eames realised nobody was beating him up any longer, “get the hell away from here. I’m not giving you anything.”

 _I’ve got to see this,_ Eames thought urgently and punched Death straight in the face. _Stay the hell away from me,_ he screamed in his mind, well aware that the last of his sanity was dropping off like another forgery — but it worked, he did manage to get his eyes open and twist his head towards where he thought the sounds were coming from.

Three men and four women in suits were surrounding Gajic; two of them were holding his arms in place, one on her knees in front of Gajic, her hands curling around Gajic’s neck. One of the others was rummaging through the hospital room cupboards.

Arthur was still crouched over but he was watching, wide-eyed. The projection returned with a pair of pliers — the others had removed Gajic’s shoe and sock — she knelt in front of him and _pulled out his little toe, just like that,_ Gajic screamed like an animal and spurts of blood stained the projections’ white shirts, and the look on Arthur’s face was fiery, intense, _encouraging and knowing,_ like—like—

_these were Arthur’s projections._

“How much time do we have left?” one of them said.

“Twenty-five minutes,” Arthur replied. “You need to be quicker.”

 _How the hell is this even possible?_ Eames' vision blurred and he shook his head violently.  _Please, please not now._

The woman pulled out another toe, the other one shook Gajic and reminded him what he needed to do to get away from the torture. Another one knelt beside Eames with a needle.

“This is just a bit of morphine, to ease off the symptoms. You OK with that?”

“Hell, yes.”

Despite all the pain, Eames could not miss the soft look in the projection’s eyes, neither the gentleness with which she rolled up Eames’ sleeve and found a vein.

The rush entering Eames’ system was sweet and intoxicating. His mind went fuzzy from the relief but finally he was able to look around properly. The first thing he noted was the way Arthur’s elbows looked like they were going to give in, the way sweat dripped along his nose.

“Why don’t you give something to him, as well?” Eames pointed at Arthur.

The projection glanced over her shoulder as if she was surprised at Arthur being there, shrugged and whatever she said was lost under Gajic’s next scream.

Then it hit him. The indifference in her look — the care she was showing to Eames — the projections had broken in for one purpose only, Eames realised with a jolt that surpassed even his pain:

_They were there to save Eames._

Never in his life had Eames seen, or even heard of, something like that. To have one’s subconscious actively aiming towards a certain aim could only have meant that such aim was craved very, very deep _three levels deep_ in the very soul of this person, exactly as deep as Dom Cobb’s insane guilt had been.

 _What does it mean?_ Eames thought, pain and morphine twirling in his bloodstream, his eyes on Arthur who was following the torture with a dark, pained, intense gaze, not unlike the one he had given Eames after they had shared that out-of-control moment on the dance floor _,_ what could it mean, _god, I cannot think about it._

_I cannot afford to think about something like that._

_To find out — and then to die — it would be too much._

_I cannot afford it._

Gajic’s foot was bleeding, another toe on the pliers.

“Inject him with adrenaline,” a projection instructed the one that had been helping Eames. “So we can dislocate his shoulders without him passing out.”

“Fuck!” Gajic shouted and kicked around furiously, only to have to succumb to the needle and the projections twisting his mouth open in a likely mission to remove some of his teeth. Eames heard Gajic gargling, saw one of the projections kicking his guts.

“You know what you need to do to make this end.” Gajic’s head was lifted back upright. Blood was flowing out of his mouth, his eyes were full of unnatural alert and pain so intense that for a passing moment Eames felt sorry for him — until he remembered Gajic’s plans to start a war and torture Eames precisely like that. The projections arranged themselves to hold Gajic still while one of them started working on his arm.

Organised, meticulous, well dressed and ruthless, the whole bunch of them. Just like Arthur.

The first one did not make Gajic speak. His shoulder looked awful with the bone jutting through the skin. One of the projections poked at it with her knuckles, Gajic sounded like he was choking.

But when they went for the second one — apparently Gajic reached his breaking point.

“Fine, fuck!” he screamed. “Give me morphine and I’ll explain. I’ll explain how you can do it.”

Eames glanced at the clock. Four and a half minutes left. He saw a projection checking her watch.

“Morphine is not coming until we have the cure.” The one with the pliers was waving them in front of Gajic’s face. “You have two seconds to start talking, and then we start dislocating your other shoulder _and_ pulling out your testicles with this. Here, it will only hurt, but I’m sure you’ve read of cases where particularly bad genital torture down under led to permanent impotence topside —“

“The three ingredients you need are the blood of the infected, the core compound from the PASIV and then — just aspirin. You heat them up so they melt together, just warm, not hot, and inject that.”

“Not good enough. Explain what they do and how.” They yanked Gajic’s trousers down. Eames was thankful for the projection’s head being in the way of his immediate vision to what they were setting up between Gajic’s legs, but the horrified look on the man’s face was enough indication.

“Don’t — just don’t—“

“Explain what it does.”

Gajic was speaking faster than Eames had ever heard. “The blood contains the viral sample as the recipient’s body has adapted it and it also carries a molecular structure originating from Somnacin. The actual compound, being far more chemically active, can easily replace it under correct conditions. Once it’s replaced the original structure the brain’s electrical activity should stabilize and stop the hallucinations as well as the headache. The aspirin is just there to weaken the active inflammation, destroy the defence mechanisms of the viral RNA and allow white blood cells to start their work. Heating will give just enough leverage for the chemical reaction to start prior to injection but you need to keep the temperature below 42 degrees Celsius at all times, otherwise the protein present in the blood cells will be destroyed and the cure is no longer effective. It’ll take a few days to come into effect fully but it always works. Please close my pants again, fuck.”

“Lovely.” The woman dropped the pliers and walked to Arthur. At that moment, Edit Piaf started echoing through the walls.

“You,” the projection said to Arthur, in no friendly tone. “You finish what we started, regardless of what Gajic attempts up there. You’ve got aspirin in your bag. The PASIV with its compound and needles is right next to you. There must be a teaspoon in Gajic’s hotel room. You take blood from Eames and steal a lighter from Yusuf’s pocket to heat it up. Now where’s the detonator for the kick?”

“It’s in the hospital lobby, in a closed box under the reception desk,” Arthur said, voice hoarse, eyes on the clock. “One of you can run there in twenty seconds and set it off.”

“It’s too far away.”

“Well you’ll have to fucking try!”

“No, wait,” Eames said, surprised he managed to get a voice out. “Check— check—“

“Check Minerva’s pockets,” Arthur completed. “Do it, now.”

It turned out Minerva was a scheming bitch through and through.


	5. Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNINGS for swearing and potentially offensive use of language.** Contains violence, blood, torture and illness, all happening in the heat of a job, seriously skip this one if you feel queasy easily, it gets pretty hardcore. Also references to OC/Eames in the past but Eames didn't like it, so don't you be discouraged either!
> 
> My eternal gratitude goes to [sonnss](http://sonnss.tumblr.com) for the relentless beta reading and to the talented authors [lorichelle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lorichelle) and [OneWhoSitsWithTurtles](http://archiveofourown.org/users/onewhositswithturtles) for wonderful support and advice all the way :)
> 
> Also thank you A3O for your fantastic guidance and support.
> 
> Comments are very welcome! However please I ask you to send any non-fic related feedback to my email (nccisden at gmail dot com) rather than as a comment on this fic (or others, as it has happened). Hate, name-calling etc will be deleted following A3O's advice (if you don't know what I mean, nevermind :) old story).
> 
> THANK YOU FOR READING!!! <3

**V**

**Reality**

 

“We were made!” Cobb shouted as soon as Arthur opened his eyes.

“I know! You better find out why the hell Yusuf gave you the dreamer’s compound,” Arthur shouted back while loading a well-calibrated roundhouse kick across Gajic’s cheek, relishing the way the man’s head twisted from the force. Just enough to keep him unconscious for a while longer. Not kill, in case Arthur needed to resume his aborted castration surgery.

“Minerva told Gajic everything right?” Cobb was walking to the woman while tearing off his shirt, probably to use it for tying her to her chair.

“Yeah,” Arthur replied from where he was creating makeshift handcuffs for Gajic out of his belt.

“We failed then.”

“Not exactly. Gajic flipped completely of course and started shooting but we fought back and won. Eames knocked Minerva unconscious and – we – pulled off Gajic’s toes until he told us how to make the cure.”

Cobb paused to spare Arthur a surprised glance. “Well done.”

“Could have gone better. Eames is infected. I need to produce the cure for him before he dies.”

 _“Eames is infected?”_ Cobb had no doubt a few follow-up questions to that but Minerva woke up and tried to reach for her gun, forcing Cobb to start wrestling with her.

“Let’s catch up on the details later.” Now that Gajic was at least semi-constrained, Arthur ran to check up on Eames. He appeared nothing short of comatose. The only indication that he wasn’t in the dream any longer was the way his breath was hitching with every inhalation, like his lungs would go out of order any moment. The poor man looked so much worse topside – hair completely soaked from sweat, skin paint-white, thin and dark around the eyes, lips blue and chin smeared in blood that kept dripping from the corner his mouth.

 _Fucking hell, this is bad._ Arthur removed Eames’ needle and, gathering all his strength, lifted the man up from the floor and carried him to the living room of the suite. Briefly he thought of opening the front door and alerting Ryan Woodhouse and the rest of MI6 who were keeping guard outside, but his faith in Cobb being able to deal with the mark and their fuckup of a team on his own was higher than his faith in Secret Service not screwing with them again.

Arthur’s priority for the moment was to make the cure, and only _then_ came the time to deal with the rest – Gajic, Minerva, Yusuf, MI6 and – the behaviour of his projections. Arthur felt a squeeze at the bottom of his belly when he thought about that _and it didn’t help that Eames’ smell was all over him again._

 _Focus,_ Arthur thought, and wondered how muscle could weight so goddamned much. Eames was not taller than him – it was all in the width.

As soon as the patient was set comfortably on the sofa, Arthur ran back to the bedroom. To both his relief and disgust, he found Yusuf sitting on top of Minerva and fighting to tie her down. Cobb was busy bear-hugging Gajic, whose tendency to refrain from being unconscious when you needed him to was apparently quite remarkable.

“I’ll kill you,” Arthur told Yusuf while he dove in to pocket the lighter from the man’s coat.

“Hey —“ Yusuf got distracted by that and got punched in the face by Minerva.

“Deal with her and I’ll make it quick and painless,” Arthur promised and leaned in to grab his bag and the PASIV.

“Do we know for sure it’ll work?” Cobb managed from where he was elbowing Gajic.

“No, we might still need to interrogate him so don’t snap his neck.” Arthur ran out and slammed the door shut, already running Gajic’s instructions in his head. Not that they were complex. All he needed to do was to put the ingredients together, warm it up and inject.

Aspirin. Arthur rummaged through his bag until he found the pack he always kept there for jobs like this — in case _someone_ annoyed him to the point of a headache. He tore the package open, took out a pill, set it on the table and crushed it with the handle of his gun. Carefully, he collected the powder and poured it into a tea cup from the complimentary tea and coffee set he found on top of the minibar.

Compound. Arthur opened the PASIV and pulled out the central vial of Somnacin. As carefully as possible he removed the lid and poured in enough to only just fill the bottom of the cup. He hated the smell of it. Arthur was pretty sure nuclear waste would stink the same.

Blood. Arthur removed one of the needles and hoses used for PASIV and cut the hose so that it was only six or so inches long. With these and the tea cup in hand he knelt on the sofa and rolled up Eames’ sleeve as quickly and gently as possible — exactly in the same position as in that _other_ hotel room so long ago, when Eames had been all quirky and irritating and smiling, _alive and well._

_Please, let this work. Please._

Arthur stuck in the needle where he saw the earlier injection marks and put the end of the hose in his mouth to create suction. As soon as he saw blood coming through the hose and reaching his mouth, he guided the hose into the mug. He aimed for equal amount of blood as there was Somnacin, then removed the needle, grabbed a teaspoon and whisked everything together as well as possible.  He then scooped a spoonful of the liquid, used the lighter to heat it up and his free hand to feel the temperature from the surface. Once it felt warmer than Arthur’s own body temperature, he discarded the lighter, put the needle into his mouth and the hose in the spoon and sucked, slowly, watching the mixture run up the hose. After the first drop disappeared inside the needle, he pressed his fingertip on the needle to stop the cure from flowing out, careful not to mix his own saliva with it, and closed the end of the hose by squeezing it with his fingers.

Eames had stopped breathing when Arthur turned to face him again.

_Shit._

As carefully as he could with his trembling hands, Arthur took Eames’ arm in his lap. He pushed the needle in from the same spot he had just taken blood from and slowly squeezed in all the contents of the hose.

After that was done, Arthur felt the faint pulse on the neck, bent Eames’ head back, closed his nasal airways and pushed breath into his lungs, unable to make much sense out of the horde of emotions attacking him on the very moment. Longing, anger, lingering arousal. The one on the top: _please don’t die on me, you fucker, please don’t die._

He gave Eames three, long breaths, checked his pulse again and then went to re-fill the needle. Gajic had not told how much of the cure a person would need and Arthur was not going to take any chances.

The procedure of heating up a spoonful and filling the needle was slightly easier now that Arthur had already done it once but his hands were shaking more because _Eames was not breathing._ When he pushed in the needle the second time, he said it aloud, stupidly hoping the wish would have more power that way.

“Don’t you fucking die. Don’t you fucking die or I’ll kill you myself.”

Second time he bent Eames’ head back to make him breathe – the second time he pressed his lips against Eames’ hot, sickly mouth, he thought of his projections and that if Eames ever survived, he would spend the rest of his life tearing Arthur to pieces for what had been so obvious in the hospital.

A complete team of armed men and women breaking into Gajic’s dream to save Eames.

In other words, _Arthur_ had broken in to save Eames. In a very twisted, very _embarrassing_ way.

Even so, as Arthur rushed to fill in the hose again, he realised that he couldn’t care less about any aftermath. He would be happy to see Eames mocking the hell out of him for the rest of eternity, even declare him the poster boy of sexual denial (not that it was inaccurate) in front of Cobb and the whole dreamshare, Gajic himself for all Arthur cared – if the goddamned bastard would just _live._

When Arthur was finished with the third injection and leaned down for the third round of breaths, he felt a shadow of the feeling that had taken over him when he had put Eames under in the inception job. That reckless, unnamed emotion. _Death is at the doorstep so why bother hiding anything._

_If he won’t start breathing now, he probably never will._

“I need you to wake up, Mr Eames.”

Back then at the dream hotel it had been just a spontaneous smile, a captivating moment. This time – the time for games was over.

Arthur leaned over Eames, twisted the man’s head back again and pressed his lips against Eames’ mouth, inhaled slowly. Just like before, he blew in a long, steady breath. As he watched Eames’ lungs empty on their own, he pressed his free hand against Eames’ cheek, caressed the stubble and felt his body responding despite all the horror of the situation, all the danger, just because of _touching his cheek, fucking hell._ Arthur inhaled again, sealed Eames’ mouth and blew in another breath but instead of just leaning back up, he moved his lips ever so slightly, just a small, innocent caress – Eames was unconscious after all – just because Arthur’s heart was starting to ask if this would be the last opportunity.

 _Don’t die on me, don’t die on me,_ his mind kept repeating, _just fucking please don’t die on me._

When he leaned down for the third time, desperation gave unforeseen strength to his inhale, stability to the way he held Eames’ jaw back, his heightened senses registered every detail of Eames’ lips as he gave him all oxygen he had in his lungs.

_Please._

Then, all of a sudden, he felt something more: a little response. Arthur lowered Eames’ head gently back to its natural position and pressed his cheek against Eames’ mouth to get a better feel. He held still until he was absolutely certain he had been right: the slightest exhale, then an inhale, very shallow but _finally there._

“Yes, keep breathing,” Arthur whispered and almost ran back to the mug. It took him longer to collect himself than should have. _He is breathing. He is breathing. I can’t waste time for fuck’s sake._ But the memory of Eames’ lips was burning his body. Finally, the renewed worry of losing Eames again kicked him into motion. With what was becoming almost practised ease he took a spoonful of the mixture, warmed it up, stuck the needle in his mouth and filled the hose.

When he turned, needle still in his mouth and the other hand squeezing the end of the hose, Eames had his eyes open.

All Arthur could do was to swallow the ridiculous smile that his face wanted to offer at the sight.

“You —“ Eames attempted when Arthur knelt above him.

“Shh. Don’t talk.” Arthur took hold of Eames’ arm and administered the injection carefully.

“— gonna catch — catch it,” Eames whispered brokenly, “if you keep —” his fingers twitched as if to finish the sentence.

“What?” Arthur was concentrated on making the liquid move in the hose. It was a tricky exercise since there was nothing to push with like with proper syringes. Then he paid attention to what Eames had said and looked up.

“Oh. I guess you’re right.“ Arthur realised that he really did not care. “It seems there’s a cure.”

“You didn’t —“ Eames closed his eyes and opened them again, although whether that was for pain or something else, Arthur was not sure. Arthur watched him breathe in and out a few times, steady himself. “You didn’t know that before — before I woke up.” Another slow breath. “You still kept sucking my needles.”

That comment broke the moment.

_Unbelievable, fuck. He’s barely awake and at it already._

As soon as the injection was done, Arthur walked back to where his makeshift lab was spread out and took hold of the table. Disappointment and relief were too strong a mix to handle.  _Fuck._

“You — you —“ Eames attempted to continue. 

"Eames." Arthur squeezed the table and forced his voice even. “I know it goes completely against your asshole nature but can you please shut the hell up? You need rest.”

_And I need to figure out how to explain the projections before you get to that fucking part of this merry tale._

“Arthur.” The tone of voice stopped Arthur where he was starting to re-fill the needle. “It’s enough, I’ll pull through.”

“Right.” Arthur put the equipment back on the table. “I’ll go and check up on Cobb then. He’s fighting Gajic.”

“Wait.”

Arthur stopped where he was already making his way out and turned around, dread swelling in his stomach. With great effort, Eames lifted his arm with like he was trying to reach for Arthur. “Come here.”

“Why?”

“Just — just come here.”

Arthur crossed his arms on his chest. “You’re too ill to play your games now, Mr Eames.”

“No such thing.” Eames dropped his arm, shook his head a little bit, the corners of his mouth twisting upwards ever so slightly. “I just thought that since – since,” he looked down as if to collect his strength, then back up again with a hint of his old smirk, “since you’ve already been swallowing my saliva and god knows what other quasi-fatal substances, perhaps it won’t make matters much worse if you come and give this sick and dying man a kiss.”

“A —“

“A kiss,” Eames repeated, and his smile faded into a pained look. “Please, Arthur. Just — don’t just stand there. We can tell Cobb that Gajic’s own projections killed him. Some sort of suppressed self-hatred. Even Gajic probably never figured out who the hell sent a hit squad.” His voice died down and he stifled a sad-sounding cough. “Please.”

Arthur’s body was moving before his mind was catching up with what was happening. Before he knew it, he was kneeling next to Eames, leaning over him to brush a hand across his cheek and wiping sweat off the side of Eames’ hot forehead. Arthur took in the unfamiliar, naked warmth of Eames’ eyes, the way he lifted his chin ever so slightly, in invitation,

and it was not a forgery, not a joke, not an inch of foolery in the way Eames opened his mouth when Arthur leaned down,

and _how it could be sweet, so sweet,_ to kiss a man that had just come back from death, whose mouth tasted like blood, whose hair was wet from hours of torturing illness, who could not even lift his arms around Arthur, and Arthur’s heart was melting at all of it at once,

_we made it_

_he is kissing me —_

And, of course, that had to be the moment when Dom Cobb burst through the door and crashed down on the floor.

Arthur stood up and turned around just in time to see Dom re-assembling himself. The man’s mouth looked like someone had stomped on it, and his left leg seemed to have been reduced from a functional limb to an accessory.

“Took you long enough.” Arthur hoped his face would not be as red as it felt. “Is everyone alive?”

“Gajic is dead, sorry. We tried to tie him up twice but the bastard nearly scratched off Yusuf’s eyeballs. He might be half blind. Minerva is fine. Yusuf’s watching over her and don’t worry, he is not going to do anything stupid this time. Did the cure work?”

“Yes,” Eames replied and although his voice was still pathetically raspy, the tone was the perfectly normal Eames. Always half-serious and slightly bored. “I had a very capable nurse treating me.”

“I’ll go and fetch Woodhouse.” Cobb limped to the door. “Both of you need to be isolated and Arthur needs to explain the cure as soon as possible.”

 

 

 xx

By the time Arthur’s body showed the first signs of the illness, he was injected with the cure and recovered within six hours. They still kept him in isolation for another forty-eight, and by the time he got out he was so agitated that his number one non-murderous fantasy was to hang himself with the hospital robe.

Spending time alone in a room with nothing but white walls and a francophone television was not the way to wind down from a job, let alone a job gone fucktacularly wrong. He had been completely unable to sleep even after they had given him tranquillizers, and his mind had possessed the unfortunate time to go through every single goddamned moment from going under,

 

 to the way Eames’ muscles flexed under that dirty white farmer shirt  
when he lifted his arm to cover his eyes from the sunshine,

to the warmth radiating from the man after that infantile argument of _you smiled at me, no_ you _smiled at me,  
_ and the delicious way Eames had lost the plot when Arthur had stepped in so close  
to shoot the projections stalking from behind,

to the goddamned English oddball wandering around the church,  
singing with a wonderful, rich voice that had taken Arthur by complete surprise,  
 _also what kind of tones that voice could take in some_ other _situations,_

to the strained tone of Huang when Eames used her voice to say “your hair is long _”  
_ and leaned in to detonate Arthur’s sensory system with the smell  
that Arthur by now knew so well that he would have been able to write a fucking poem out of it,

to the heat of Eames’ feverish skin against Arthur’s when they were both put under and into the final level,

to the way he looked at Arthur in the dim light under the emergency hatch  
and the indescribable, irrational _need_ Arthur had felt to keep him safe, not let him die,  
 _how the hell did I ever manage to convince myself that Eames is nothing but an irritating disturbance to me,_

and finally, that moment when all of it broke loose with the loud blast of Arthur’s projections  
attacking the hospital room and making flesh out of a feeling that had grown  
so deep, so burning and so strong within Arthur that once it was on the surface,  
there was no chance for him to look anywhere else,

the reluctant admiration

the need to protect

the love _._

 

xx

With some half-whispered threats at the persons of his nurses and doctors Arthur managed to cut down his time in the hospital by a few days. Once finally out, the first thing he bought was a laptop and got online.

After MI6 had milked all the possible information out of Arthur and been convinced that he would keep his silence, they had all disappeared, surprisingly willing to keep their promise about not imprisoning Arthur for his numerous other crimes. Perhaps for future utilisation, possibly for the fact that the team _did_ save the Western civilisation from a pandemic after all. Arthur had neither seen nor heard of Cobb or Eames during his stay in the Parisian hospital.

Cobb had sent him an encrypted email to tell him that he had tied up the loose ends on behalf of the team and that Arthur’s payment was on its way to his bank account. Cobb had travelled back to the States again and Arthur really, sincerely wished that the man would be able to stay with his children and never go around doing favours for forgers with a death wish again.

Yusuf had apparently managed to cut some kind of a deal with either Cobb, Eames or Woodhouse since he was still alive, gone back to Mombasa, the bastard. One day, Arthur would send him a plague by post or something.

Minerva had been taken by MI6, hopefully somewhere where the sun didn’t shine. Arthur made a mental note to check up on her every now and then. He had no intention of forgetting his revenge – just postponing it until the time was optimal.

And Eames had vanished. Arthur broke into MI6’s records to make sure they were not holding him up and as far as he could see, they weren’t. The last trace of Eames was when he had checked out of another hospital in Paris and left the country. No record as of where he had gone. Nairobi via Dubai first, yes, but the trail ended there.

_Right. I guess that’s it, then._

It stung more than it should have. What had he been expecting? For Eames to be waiting for him outside the hospital with a bucket of flowers? For Eames to even want to see him outside a job? In fact, for Eames to even be civil at him anywhere outside situations where he was not a coughing fit away from death?

Arthur closed the laptop and finished his coffee, his eyes already scanning the streets for a taxi.

He could renew that gym membership, finally.

 

 

xx

Eleven hours of travel inclusive of four hours of sleep later when Arthur stepped into his apartment, his mood had not improved at all. He dropped his bag on the floor, tore off his clothes and went straight into the shower.

At least now he was wiser. Now he knew what the problem was – why an idiot like Eames always managed to ignite such fury in him.

Letting the water flush over him, Arthur wondered absently at which point he had developed these feelings for Eames. Looking back, Eames had rubbed him the wrong way since day one; Arthur could recall daydreaming about punching him in the face on the very day they had met. The dick had made a joke about Arthur looking like a Matrix extra – probably because he had guessed Arthur to be about ten times fitter than him in his dorky khaki trousers and lazy stubble. Underneath that thought of Arthur's — it was easy to see now that Arthur _knew_ it was there — was fascination, admiration, some kind of unworded wish.

Tragicomically, Arthur thought, somewhere between Fischer and Gajic that wish had morphed into a burning need: at some point between saying that stupid yes to Saito and half-escaping the Parisian hospital his body had been loaded full of low-resonating pain of knowing how futile, unprofessional and embarrassing it all was. Eames did not look like the type for deep emotions, his substantial talent at raising them in other people aside.

Perhaps Arthur would have been better off without knowing, after all. He turned off the shower and grabbed a towel. Either way, there was nothing to do about it, other than just go on and hope that the feeling would wear off.

He would change into something comfortable, open the TV and order some Indian for dinner, maybe try and sleep again if possible. In the morning he would sit down and make a plan for at least four weeks, a daily schedule. What to do, where to go. Fill it from morning until evening so he would have no time to think. It was just like another job, really. Just put on some effort and you’ll move on.

With a towel around his waist, Arthur made his way to the bedroom — and froze on the doorway.

The first thing he saw was a tattooed arm and the accompanying batch of bare back on display in between the sheets.

Next, a set of toes poking out from under Arthur’s blanket.

The bag next to the wardrobe, the all-too-familiar jacket, trousers and the god-awful shirt thrown carelessly on the back of the chair. One of Arthur’s towels hanging from the cupboard door. Chinese takeaway by the bedside table, an empty bottle of beer lying on the floor.

Arthur grabbed the doorframe for support and closed his eyes, choking back a sudden hysterical laughter.

_I am mad. I must be mad._

Once he was able to walk again, he turned 180 degrees and nearly ran to where he had dropped his jacket. Fingers shaking, he fished out the die and threw once, twice, thrice.

It was not a dream.

_Not a dream._

After several minutes of muted panic, Arthur got back up, die still squeezed in his palm and made his way back to the bedroom.

Eames was still there. His back was rising and falling with the slow rhythm of his breathing.

 _How the hell — why the hell — the bastard has been living in my flat, sleeping in my bed,_ Eames turned on his back all of a sudden and the blanket moved aside to reveal a batch of Arthur’s dark blue boxer shorts, _using my goddamn underwear, like he —_

_Like I —_

There was only one possible explanation, really. Arthur stood and stared for what probably was half a decade, holding the doorframe in a death grip and pressing a palm against his heart which was apparently attempting to burst through the ribcage.

 _Maybe,_ he thought and his world was shaking like a collapsing dream, _just maybe, it had not been just a passing moment for him after all._

_He wouldn’t be here otherwise, right?_

_Right?_

When Arthur finally reached the conclusion, there was no going back. For a few more moments he stood by the door, breath quickening, and once he had collected enough adrenaline to override his wrecking nerves he dropped his towel on the floor and walked to the bed. Very carefully, he lifted the blanket and laid down beside Eames so that his stomach was pressed against the other man’s side and one leg resting on top of Eames’ thighs.

Eames made a small, sleepy noise and pressed his nose against Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur leaned in to smell his hair, trying very hard not to tremble.

He could feel the moment when Eames woke up. The man’s pace of breathing quickened ever so slightly and the tendon above his collarbone twitched. But he did not open his eyes.

For a long time they just laid in silence, adjusting to the moment.

Arthur was the one to break the silence eventually.

“If you weren’t fresh from the hospital, Eames, I’d beat you up. For not telling me straight away how much trouble you were in.”

The corner of Eames’ mouth curled upwards – Arthur felt it against his skin. “For that? I thought you’d want to punch me for dragging you into that mess in the first place.”

“You wouldn’t be alive anymore if you hadn’t.”

At that, Eames tilted his head to kiss Arthur’s shoulder where he had been leaning on it, eyes still closed.

“What are you doing?” Arthur breathed, barely able to speak from the way his stomach was flipping.

“Trying not to scare you shitless.”

“What do you mean?”

“Arthur,” Eames pronounced and looked up. It took all Arthur’s effort to stay still in front of the gaze. He had _never_ seen Eames like that. All that characteristic absence was gone from his eyes, intensity radiated even from his skin.

“You are lying on top of me without clothes,” Eames continued. “I am trying to figure out why that is before I lose my self-control.” At that, he snuck both of his hands around Arthur and crossed them around the small of his back. It was an innocent gesture, affectionate, but the reaction on Arthur’s naked skin was everything except innocent.

 _I have to do this._ Arthur had no idea what he was stepping into and Eames was right, he _was_ scared shitless even though nothing had even happened — yet — but any fears aside, Arthur had seen his own projections pushing through into the dream and taking care of Eames with fatal determination — the evidence was out there and no amount of self-denial would work any longer. 

Eames knew, too, Arthur suspected. The man's intelligence was razor sharp after all.

Still, Arthur felt he needed to make sure there was no room for misinterpretation. He needed to know that Eames was there for the right reason because — Arthur aborted the thought as too terrifying before he got to the end of it but it had to do with breaking from the inside, becoming a wreck beyond repair.

“You know why my projections tortured Gajic, right?”

“To save my life. We already discussed this.”

“Yes, but you also know why. I mean — why something like that can even happen. They were not supposed to be there. It was like the Mal Cobb case all over again.”

Eames blinked slowly, a hint of smile appearing on his face and melting into the gentleness of his look. “I have to tell you that I have never been so surprised in my life but yes, I do. The question is: do you?”

Arthur drew in breath and collected every inch of his courage, “I am not stupid, Mr Eames. I know now. “ And before Eames could say anything infuriating: “You are sleeping in my bed, wearing my clothes, messing up my flat so don’t you even try to go with something like _thank you very much for your admiration, Arthur, how very heart-warming and sweet of you, now if you’ll excuse me —“_

Eames kicked his hips up, turning Arthur around in mid-air and landing on the bed on top of him. The combined effect of all wind being knocked out of Arthur and Eames suddenly pressing his mouth on him was enough to nearly make him lose consciousness. As soon as Arthur managed some air, however, he started kissing back, and after that there seemed to be no end to it.

When Eames registered that Arthur was reciprocating, he made a choked sound at the back of his throat and pressed his hips down on Arthur’s. The realisation of how turned on both of them were was enough to make Arthur’s whole body go electric. _It’s happening, really happening,_ his mind screamed when his hands fumbled their way to Eames’ hair, ungelled and messy from sleeping, down to his neck, across his broad shoulders, touching the surface of the tattoos Arthur knew were there but he could not see because he couldn’t see _anything_ when Eames was kissing him like that.

“Darling,” Eames whispered against the corner of Arthur’s mouth, his breath hot on Arthur’s skin, and Arthur reached out to touch those lips, too, to trace the lines of Eames’ heartbreakingly beautiful mouth. Distantly, he thanked himself for having had the good sense to get naked before interrupting Eames’ sleep. Then Eames moved his hips slowly, and the friction, hardness of it, was almost too much. Arthur’s skin registered every angle, every detail, he arched his hips up, slid his hands down Eames’ back, under the waistband of his boxers.

“Never in my life I believed I could —“ Eames whispered at the touch and moved Arthur upwards on the bed, his new mission apparently to kiss and suck every batch of skin he could find. Arthur writhed around him mindlessly, both of his hands twisting in Eames’ hair, all of his fears forgotten at the _urgency_ radiating through every motion of the other man. Eames kept whispering aborted sentences against Arthur’s skin — from what Arthur was able to make out, all of them concerned his disbelief at being able to touch the other man finally.

Like — even through the haze, Arthur’s mind stilled at the thought — like Eames had wanted this for a while.

“Eames.”

“Yes,” Eames breathed against Arthur’s belly button.

“I thought —“ Eames was _licking_ his stomach now and Arthur almost forgot what he wanted to ask. “I thought — I thought that you always kept messing with me because you thought it was funny.”

Eames stilled.

“I didn't do it because I found it _funny_ , darling,” he said quietly.

“Why then?” Arthur looked down to meet Eames’ gaze, which was… Wary, somehow. Worried?

“I thought that if I cannot get anything else from you, at least I can get your attention. I can at least annoy the living shite out of you. Pretty well in fact.”

“That’s what it’s been about?”

At that, Eames shrugged and gave Arthur the most heart-melting smile he had ever seen.

“Fuck. I really should hit you.” Arthur dropped his head on the pillow, unable to _believe_ what he had just heard, and Eames, of course, chose that moment to lean further down and swallow him whole.

“Fuck!” Arthur cried out again, and it was only Eames’ heavy palm pressing his hips down that prevented him from bucking up. Eames made a low, happy noise on the back of his throat and started moving.

 _I cannot believe this is happening,_ Arthur thought again and again, helplessly, and squeezed the die still in his palm, wanting to check again that it really was real, that it really was happening, but he was unable to do anything except moan desperately. Eames’ thumb was caressing his hip, finding its way to the crease of his groin and resting there.

The pleasure was tormenting, as intense as the pain from being shot in the kneecaps but oh so much sweeter. It was contracting in Arthur’s lower belly, and the mere thought that it was _Eames_ doing this to him, the very same Eames that had been so unapproachable, tremendously handsome but impenetrable, unreachable, always there but never present, like quicksilver – Arthur leaned up to take in the sight beneath him, _jesus christ —_

“Eames, I’m going to —“

“No, love, not yet.” Eames raised his head to give Arthur another smile. His eyes were so glassy that he could have been on drugs. “Something else I want to show you first.”

“ _Eames.”_

“Patience, Arthur.” Eames leaned over to grab Arthur’s hand and gently peeled away the fingers holding the die. He set the object on the bedside table. “You won’t need this. I’ll make you know.”

A distant part of Arthur’s mind noted that his rather monotonous experience in sex and non-existent experience in sex with men meant that he only had a vague idea of where all of it was leading, but the rest of him was too turned on to care. _Anything. Anything with Eames._

Eames took off his boxers and straddled the other man. When he rolled a condom on Arthur, Arthur realised _exactly_ where it was going to lead. He pressed his palms on Eames’ impossibly huge thighs. From that angle, the man looked gigantic, so devastatingly attractive with all those tattoos, broad chest, hard abs, leaking cock and Arthur _wanted_ so much that his body was about to break.

“You should see your face,” Eames said, “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” and leaned down to brush his rough fingers across Arthur’s mouth. “Like a dangerous feline, arching to my touch. I have a confession to make.”

“Wh—“ Arthur attempted to clear his head. “What’s that?”

“I tracked down your flight. I knew you were going to arrive today. I was going to pretend that I’m asleep, but you were taking your sweet time and I fell asleep for real.”

“Not my fault. The traffic was —“ Arthur began but Eames aligned himself, slided back down slowly and Arthur’s sentence was lost in the sudden understanding on what exactly Eames was confessing.

Eames was — all stretched out, so warm, so slick, so _completely ready_ for him — for Arthur —

“ _God.”  
_

Eames’ leaned in, his shaky chuckle ghosting Arthur’s forehead when he pressed a kiss there. “Thanks but you can just call me Eames.”

“Eames.”

“Yes.”

_“Eames.”_

“I am here, love.”

“Just—“ _It’s too much – too much all at once,_ “I — I have you.” Arthur had never heard his own voice trembling like that.

Eames kissed him on the mouth this time and arousal was like fever radiating from his lips. He started moving ever so slowly. “That you do.”

What Arthur had earlier recognised as urgency was now amplified by thousands in every flex of Eames’ muscle. His jaw set, eyes burning, hands roaming freely over Arthur, and suddenly Arthur wanted nothing more than to touch in turn so he did — he ran his fingers down Eames’ stomach, curled them around the hair at the bottom of his belly, squeezed his sides and thighs, thumbed his ribs, caressed his chest and all again and again in no order at all — the pleasure was heightening again and he knew he would not last long, not when Eames was running rough fingers across his throat, his nipples —

“Eames, I —“ By instinct and driven by need, Arthur overcame the last ounce of his nervousness to reach and grab Eames’ erection.

“Bloody hell,” Eames said with a shocked, throaty voice, speeding up, and Arthur followed the rhythm, “no — please —  _Arthur —_ if you do that, I’m going to — _“_

“That’s the idea,” Arthur whispered and grabbed Eames by the hip with his free hand to drive him even deeper, _fuck, it really is happening and I am going to come,_ Eames was panting through his mouth now, all of his body tense and sweat breaking, the man was throwing his head back, the bed was probably on the verge of breaking and Arthur was moving his hand as fast as he could, Eames was barely keeping his balance, he was shaking that hard —

“Arthur —"

_“Let it go.”_

With a cry, Eames collapsed against Arthur, their foreheads crashing together, and spilled all over Arthur’s hand, face pained and surreally beautiful and yet still moving over him like he could not ever get enough. A single drop of tear in the corner of Eames’ eye was the last thing Arthur felt — against his own cheek — before his body finally, _finally_ gave in to the pleasure.

 

 

xx

Apparently they were both still weak. It was the only explanation to why Arthur woke up without any recollection of falling asleep. Eames was still half on top of him, his face against Arthur’s ear, his heavy leg sprawled over Arthur’s hips, his hand tight around Arthur’s wrist. The bed was a damp, sticky  mess. _So much for brand-new sheets,_ Arthur thought and smiled.

He laid awake there for a long time. For once, his mind was blissfully quiet. All he could hear was Eames’ steady breathing, all he could smell was Eames and his skin was still feeling the ghosts of Eames’ touches. Night had arrived in New York.

Eames woke up on his own that time and lifted up his head to grace Arthur with a half-lidded grin.

“We fell asleep?”

“Yeah.” Arthur couldn’t help staring at those lips. _It’s really him._

“I cannot believe we’re here,” Eames continued, eyeing the room.

“Well, you broke into my house. Hence we’re here.”

The man looked away upon hearing that, which Arthur guessed was a rare display of embarrassment. He pressed a hand on Eames’ jaw, overtaken by a sudden burst of affection. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said.“I am happy we are.”

The answer came moments later and it was barely a whisper. "I cannot believe you said that."

“Well I cannot believe you nearly died, you fucking asshole,” Arthur retorted and squeezed Eames' jaw a little harder. The memory attempted to return with all of its pain but Arthur pushed it away forcefully. It was too fresh, too painful. Eames could have died in Arthur’s hands.

Eames, apparently unbothered by this thought, just turned his face to press a kiss on Arthur’s palm. “I cannot believe you sucked on my dirty needle to save me.”

“I cannot believe you were stupid enough to hire that woman.”

“Well.” Eames shook his head a bit, his features darkening momentarily. “On that, we agree. Her payback will be spectacular.”

Arthur nodded and spent a moment imagining all the things he could, inspired by his very own projections, do to Minerva Brennan.

Eames interrupted his thoughts by pressing Arthur back against the mattress and overwhelming him with a long, lingering kiss on the mouth, already warm with a tinge of renewed desire.

Arthur arched into the kiss and thought, randomly,

_this might actually work._

The smile against their joined lips seemed to ignite Eames, who ran a possessive hand across Arthur’s face, squeezing down his nose and gently tugging his lower lip, and leaned by his ear to whisper:

“So why _did_ you smile at me like that?”

“Sorry?”

“When you put me under into the final level of the Fischer job.”

“Ah, that. Well. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I thought we were going to die. I thought I could because chances were pretty slim that either of us would be around for when you’d give me the time of the day for that.”

Eames chuckled quietly, low and shy. It was the kind of laughter Arthur had never heard from him and guessed it was one of his genuine ones. Reserved for private moments.

“You really should learn to express your feelings without imminent danger of death,” he then told Arthur in a bit more serious tone.

Arthur just wrapped his arms around Eames’ neck, crossed his fingers there and wondered if he could just hold on and never let go.

“No offense or anything but that’s a bit rich coming from you, Mr Eames.”


End file.
